


A Reason To Live For

by GoggleLad



Category: Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story, Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika | Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Genre: Arc 1 Spoilers, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Complex characters being complex, Drama, F/F, Probably not compliant with Arc 2 but I dunno, Set during and after Chapter 10, The Meaning of Life, The meaning of death, but plenty of subtext, not romance-focused
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-21
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:07:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 24,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25429660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoggleLad/pseuds/GoggleLad
Summary: During the final battle for the fate of Kamihama City, Alina takes a fall.  But this is not the end of her story.  In the calm after the storm Alina is forced to confront the consequences of her choices, and take a good hard look at what matters to her.  Living with your past can be so much more complicated than dying for it.Karin hasn't given up on Alina yet.  Even if the world turns against her, Karin still believes she can be saved.  Is she right?
Relationships: Alina Gray/Misono Karin
Comments: 90
Kudos: 85





	1. The Meaning of Art | How to Take a Fall

The storm rendered the world in monochrome, washing city and sky alike in shades of gray, but the flames blossoming below painted blooms of red across the city streets, all the more vibrant for their contrast.

Bellisima. Alina couldn’t help but laugh. It was exactly as she’d dreamed. Truly, she was painting the city itself, painting the _world_ , with her ultimate paintbrush, the supreme witch that she had raised to perfection. She couldn’t ask for anything more.

Even now, as she hurtled towards the ground.

She lost her vision when the ground painted brilliant pain across her body. Her bones were as nothing more than matchsticks holding together a cheap doll that had been thrown off a roof. But still she stood up. A mere fall had failed to kill her even when she’d first become a magical girl, and now that she fully understood her power and had the Uwasa of the Fur God empowering her, it was hardly more than an inconvenience. So what if she was burning through her magic? Even in the worst case, if Eve fell and couldn’t purify her, she would only become a Witch.

That might just be the perfect ending, no?

Now, where had her ultimate paintbrush gone? She had to brush specks of color out of her eyes to see. Blood? No, it must be paint, to come in such vivid colors. A meaningless distraction. She wasn’t finished just yet, there was still more for her to–

“Alina!”

A word that grabbed her attention as surely as a bullet. The last voice that she’d expected to hear. A girl with purple hair under a black witch’s hat, a scythe that she rode like a broomstick, and eyes filled with pain.

She seemed so out of place here.

“Idiota. What are you doing here?”

“I should be asking that!” Karin shouted back. “What’s going on? What have you been doing? What are you wearing? Why… why are you trying to destroy the city?!”

The questions were annoying. “I had a speech earlier. You missed it.” She shook her head to clear it, and a smile spread across her face as she felt the rush of the Uwasa’s influence taking hold again. “As an artist, you should listen well. I’m here to fulfill humanity’s desire for destruction! With this city as my canvas, I’ll give everyone what they long for! I’ll set all those empty lives ablaze!”

“This… This isn’t what anyone wants!” Karin was trembling. With fear? Excitement? Anger? Which was it? “Please, just stop this. If you stop now, then we can still…”

“Stop?” Alina laughed, loud and harsh and with no regard for her composure. She was above such things. “Ridicolissima! I, Alina, have no intention of stopping! This city will be my masterpiece!”

Pulling the brim of her hat down didn’t conceal the droplets that fell from Karin’s face to her feet. “You’ll even kill me, senpai? Even after helping me so many times, now you’re just going to…”

A stumble. Not of her feet, but of her mind. Kill Karin? An image came to mind, of Karin’s remains painting the street. No. That wasn’t right. But…

Humans craved death. Alina would give them that. Karin was human. Therefore…

No. Karin was an artist. That must be the mistake. She was an artist, but she hadn’t yet reached the truth of humanity. It was too soon for her. “You can go. As an artist, you still have potential. If you leave Kamihama now, you’ll be fine.”

Karin’s words on the wind were soft, so faint that they were nearly missed. “Just me?”

Alina smiled. Yes, this image, this was what felt right. “Just you.”

The crash came suddenly, the Fur God reacting even before Alina could, pulling her back as brightly colored candy wrappers struck the place where she’d been standing with impressive force. Karin, poised against the backdrop of a city aflame, flourished her scythe and pointed it at Alina, her gaze firm with resolution. “Then, Alina… As your friend, I, Magical Karin, the magical girl born of Halloween… will stop you!”

The Fur God recoiled. This was a soul that had no need of the Uwasa’s kindling, for it was alight with passion even as it screamed out in pain. A laugh raked its way out of Alina’s throat. This was the best, this was the worst. A beautiful and tragic painting, that could only end in death.

Violence erupted. With a sweep of her scythe Karin took hold of the plentiful rubble around her, imbued with her magical energy, and sent the whole lot of it soaring at Alina. Alina raised her arms, drawing on the Uwasa’s power, and splayed her death masks out before her as she focused her magic to form a star of coruscating light. A shower of iridescent energy bathed the day in fresh new colors, broken rubble scattered around Alina without a single piece hitting her.

Another flash of light scarred the ground where Karin had stood, but there she stood no longer, instead cutting through the wind riding upon her scythe. The Fur God’s death masks gave pursuit, chasing after her as she tore through the air, obstructing her way as she tried to get closer to Alina. Once, twice, thrice the emerald bolts lit up the sky, and thrice Karin narrowly evaded the strikes, and then she crushed a death mask with her storm of charged rubble and cut a straight path toward her foe at full speed.

She was unprepared for the downpour of brilliant stars that dropped down on her from above, a magical onslaught that covered the entire area so that even nimble Karin couldn’t evade it. The girl vanished from sight beneath the barrage of light and the billowing dust that followed in its wake. A direct hit. But. Not a conclusive one. The dust had yet to settle before Karin erupted from it, her clothing torn, flying through the air towards Alina.

“JACK DEATH SCYTHE!”

Karin’s scythe swung out, but she hadn’t been nearly fast enough. Alina bent back far enough to turn the world on its head, Karin’s scythe cutting cleanly through the air just above her, and Karin’s own speed propelled her past Alina before she could take another shot. Alina leered victoriously as she straightened up. “You missed.”

Karin touched down on the ground. She stood tall, straightened her hat, and turned to face Alina. “No,” she said, holding up a bundle of white fur in her hand. “I didn’t.”

The world rocked around Alina. The color drained out of the world, even the blaze of the flames seeming to fade, but it wasn’t the flames that were fading, it was Alina. The Uwasa of the Fur God that she had robed herself in… “You stole it,” she said incredulously.

Darkness descended. Without the power of the Uwasa to support her, her body and mind gave way under the strain of all that she had put herself through. The last thing that she saw was Karin flying toward her.

With tears in her eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm gonna be blathering about my thoughts down here in the notes. Feel free to stop reading if you don't care about the author's thoughts on their own work, but if that's the sort of thing that interests you, carry on.
> 
> So, Alina's big scene in Chapter 10 got me started thinking, because I have a lot to say about Alina. And then it turned out that Karin completely missed the final battle, and that was then I knew that I HAD to write this. Karin conspicuously absent at the same time that Alina goes missing? There is a STORY to be told there, and I'm going to tell it. Since this is written after Chapter 10 but before Arc 2, it probably isn't going to mesh with whatever Arc 2 does, but whatever, I needed to write this. I had Things To Say. And the more I wrote, the more I realized that I actually had quite a lot of Things To Say, and instead of a oneshot this turned into a sprawling multi-chapter monster. This first chapter does the set-up work, and after this we'll be moving on to the main content.
> 
> This is new territory for me in a lot of ways, so there's some experimental stuff going on. Please bear with me. If there's anything you have any questions about, feel free to ask me in the comments! Also feel free to leave a comment if you don't have any questions, or even if you don't really have anything to say, I love getting comments.
> 
> Alina's artistic madness is dialed up to 11 here and the Uwasa is having some influence on her thought process, which I tried to get across in her narration, using fragmented thoughts and lots of evocative artistic imagery. I'm not sure I quite pulled it off the way I wanted to, there were some parts where I opted to go for clarity in describing events over depicting Alina's madness, but I did end up with some really vivid descriptions as a result, so I'm satisfied with the result.
> 
> I learned when I was doing research for this fic that the boss-only version of Holy Alina in chapter 10 actually has different attack animations than the playable Christmas version! In addition to several subtle design alterations that make her quite a bit more unsettling, Final Battle Alina attacks with rainbow-colored light, while Christmas Alina sticks to the green that Regular Alina uses. The more you know!
> 
> If it wasn't clear, this story has no relation to my previous Alina/Karin fic. I'd like to think that, if that story had happened, things would have gone down a bit differently in Chapter 10, but we'll never know. This fic is rather different from my past works here, it isn't all going to be sunshine and rainbows, but this story won't be completely devoid of cute and funny moments either. If you've enjoyed my other works, I encourage you to stick around.
> 
> This is my first time posting a multi-chapter fic, so we'll see how this goes. At the time of posting this first chapter I've already written a good deal of the rest of it, with 3 chapters left to go (I think, assuming no further surprises with this fic ballooning on me). I'll be uploading a new chapter every 1-3 days, depending on how my writing progress is going, how much editing I have to do with the next chapter to be posted, how busy I am, etc. My hope is that I'll be able to finish the last chapters in time while sticking to this schedule. I'm basically tying a burning log to myself with a rope, and trying to sprint to some water before the fire makes it all the way up the rope. EDIT: And I succeeded!


	2. The Meaning of Rehabilitation | Magical Karin’s Villain Reeducation Program

The light shining on Alina’s face was what woke her up. She grimaced and tried to roll over to escape from the sun, but her body refused her. It felt like her limbs were filled with lead. She squeezed her eyes shut to try to block out the light, but it wasn’t enough. Eventually she was forced to give up, open her eyes, and face the proverbial music.

She didn’t know this room. She didn’t know this bed. She didn’t know the blanket that had been draped over her, that might as well be an iron wall for how her weak arms struggled to lift it.

She certainly didn’t know the front of the car that was sticking through the wall opposite her. That wasn’t something that one expected to find in an otherwise normal and quaint room.

Putting aside the one out-of-place element here, this felt a lot like the time that she had woken up in the hospital. Well, it clearly wasn’t a hospital room, nor was she wearing hospital robes, but the situation was still quite similar.

The door creaked open, and a familiar purple-haired girl crept quietly into the room. So, her first visitor was the same as in the hospital, too. Karin closed the door gently and started to tiptoe across the room, carefully carrying a large bag that appeared to be stuffed nearly to bursting.

“Buongiorno,” Alina greeted dryly.

Karin jumped in surprise, dropping the bag in the process. “Alina!” She broke into a relieved smile as she hurried across the room to Alina’s side. “Thank goodness! I didn’t know what to do if you never woke up. Are you okay? Are you hungry? I brought some food, you can–”

“Enough! Che palle, give me some space.” Alina tried to physically push Karin away, but she was still having difficult extricating her arms from the blanket. “I’ll be fine. More importantly, where is this? Is this your room?”

“Oh! No, um…” Karin took a step back, and her smile was replaced by a look of anxiety. “It’s, um, an apartment that I kind of broke into. The building is abandoned, since a lot of it got damaged during… everything,” she said vaguely, waving her hand. “But this room is mostly fine!”

Alina glanced again at the car that had been shoved partway through the wall.

“I still don’t really get everything that happened,” Karin continued, “but a super big witch did a lot of damage to the city. But, it got beaten! And, the city is still standing. Mostly.” Karin paused, looking down at the floor. “But, um… Alina, your house… isn’t there anymore.”

It seemed to really bother the fool girl. “It’s inconsequential,” Alina said with a dismissive shrug.

“But, your parents…” Karin almost choked on her own words.

“There’s no chance that they were inside. They would have evacuated as soon as the sirens started,” Alina reassured her.

“Even if they couldn’t find you?”

“Si.” Alina laid her head back and looked up at the ceiling. She didn’t care to think about what she would do next right now. She had been on the cusp of creating her ultimate work of art, and… failed. And burned a lot of bridges in the process.

“Um…” Karin still had more to say, but she seemed to be having difficulty finding the words. “So… I was talking to people. I mean, other magical girls. And I think I’ve figured out what was going on.” She took a deep breath. “So… You were part of that group, right? The, uh, Wings of Magius? And you were trying to save all the magical girls in the world. So, that was really good. And then you got taken over by that Rumor thing, and it brainwashed you, and so that’s why you, you were, uh, like that…”

“That’s molto stupida,” Alina denounced.

Karin looked up with a start. “What?”

“I, Alina, have never cared about saving magical girls. Nor was I brainwashed.” Alina frowned. “That irritante fur suit does have some mental influence, but my choices belong to no one other than myself, Alina.”

Karin leaned in close over the bed, tightly clenching the sheets in her fists. “Then why?! I don’t understand you! Why did you try to destroy Kamihama? Every time I think I understand you, you do something that makes no sense!”

“I thought I told you before,” Alina grumbled. “Humankind unconsciously craves death. Therefore, I was going to give it exactly what it wants. It’s embarrassing that, even after preparing the ultimate paintbrush, I still failed to follow through.”

“Embarrassing?! Alina, those are people’s lives!”

“Yes, and I was attempting to fulfill them!” Alina fired back.

“People don’t want to die!” Karin shouted, getting right up in Alina’s face.

“I disagree! Mankind’s ongoing pollution of the environment is proof of their longing for death.”

“No it isn’t! People can be careless, and shortsighted, and make mistakes. That doesn’t mean they want to die!”

“Then what about war? People have been killing each other since the dawn of time. And furthermore, my art, Alina’s art, which is focused on death and decay, was able to entrance the public.”

“You’re wrong, Alina! And I’ll prove it to you!” Karin snatched her bag back up from the floor and slammed it down on the bed, prompting a wince from Alina. Another few inches to the side and she might have lost an eye to that bag. “I brought some education material! You’re not going anywhere until I pound into your head how important people’s lives are.”

Alina’s spirits dropped as she realized what was in the bag. “Karin, I’ve already read every volume of Phantom Thief Magical Kirin, as per your insistence.”

“Apparently not closely enough!” Karin shouted stubbornly. “I assembled a collection of the greatest hits of Kirin to prove it to you. And I got a bunch of other manga and anime, too! Until school opens up again I have plenty of time to teach you. Here, we’ll start with a classic.” She shuffled through the bag and pulled out a volume of manga, worn from being read so many times, and held it out to Alina. “Kirin Volume Two. Here, if you just flip to page thirty-two…” She stopped talking and frowned as Alina failed to take it from her. “I’m not backing down on this, senpai, so if you’ll just cooperate…”

“Holding it will be impossibile for me right now,” Alina stated bluntly.

Karin blinked, anger suddenly overwritten by confusion. “Huh?”

“I can’t lift my arms, idiota.” Alina sighed. “The Uwasa of the Fur God consumes life force. I had trouble finding enough to power it, so it used mine. Capito? I overused it, and now I have no strength. Talking is tiring. Moving is hard. Holding something? Impossibile.”

“…Oh.” Karin said it in such a small voice. “I thought… you said you were okay…”

“I said I’ll be fine,” Alina snapped. She never liked it when Karin was moping. Karin was a bright person, she shouldn’t be moping. “Give me time. I’ll recover, or I’ll learn to paint with my teeth. But for today, I won’t be holding that book.” She fixed Karin with a hard stare.

Eventually, Karin nodded, her eyes hardening with resolve. “Okay.” She took a deep breath. “Okay! Fine then! I’ll just read it to you!” She reached under Alina’s back and pulled her up into a sitting position, leaning her up against the wall, though she slipped and banged Alina’s head against the wall.

“Ow!”

“Sorry!”

Alina sighed. That was just like Karin. Gentle, and a little clumsy.

“Okay, now look.” She sat down next to Alina, leaning in close to hold the manga up for her. “See, right here, page thirty-two, this is where Kirin…” Karin continued on, babbling on and on about Kirin and friendship and the meaning of life.

And Alina, begrudgingly, listened.

…

…

…

“…And we can see here how Kirin refutes the villain’s philosophy by her choice of what to steal, implicitly placing a higher value on interpersonal connections than on not only wealth but even objects with strong personal connections, representing that true happiness comes not from your possessions but from your bonds with others, and we can see how she is rewarded for this by…”

Privately, Alina found the phenomenon in which the fool girl’s vocabulary transformed when critically discussing manga to be more interesting than the critical discussion itself, but she kept her mouth shut and didn’t voice any protests. Her stomach had other ideas, gurgling loudly.

Karin stopped, looking surprised. “Oh! Right, I got so caught up, I forgot about the food!” She rapped her knuckles against her head and made an expression that was probably supposed to be cute. She scrounged through her bag and pulled out a couple of wrapped burgers.

“You’re going to have to help me with this,” Alina said with a sigh.

“Right, right!” The girl seemed rather pleased with that, for some reason. She unwrapped the burger and held it near Alina’s face for her to bite into. It took a few tries for them to get it quite right, so that Alina could comfortably reach it while _not_ having it squashed against her face, but they figured it out.

“A drink would be buono as well,” Alina eventually said between bites.

“I’ve got you covered!” Karin retrieved a pair of drinks, opening up a can of coffee and raising it to Alina’s lips. Alina managed to not choke on it, but she made a face as she swallowed.

“It’s bitter,” she complained. Black coffee was not at all her preference, as the idiota ought to well know.

“Well, I’m feeling bitter right now too,” Karin said vindictively as she poked a straw into her own beverage, a carton of strawberry milk. “A lot of people are, with the shape the city is in.”

Alina scowled at the strawberry milk as Karin smugly sipped it. She wanted to snatch it away, their usual routine, but her body wouldn’t cooperate. “You did this on purpose.”

“If you want something sweeter, you’re going to have to work for it,” Karin huffed. “If you make progress in your lessons and work towards forgiveness, I’ll buy you strawberry milk.”

“…Very well. Let’s continue,” Alina complied, her voice as bitter as her coffee.

“Right, so as you can see here, comparing the juxtaposition of Kirin and the treasure in _this_ frame compared to the earlier frame in chapter 43…”

…

…

…

It was quite some time later, after a lengthy bout of critical analysis of a growing stack of Phantom Thief Magical Kirin volumes, that Karin delved back into her bag and pulled out a Blu-ray case. “Okay! Next up, we’re watching this!”

Alina’s eyebrow twitched as she glanced at the cover. “Is that an anime about a magical girl? That’s a little ironic, no?”

“Just trust me, it’s great! I’ll have you converted in no time!” Karin popped open the case and took the disc out, then looked around. “Um, let’s see… I guess there’s no TV in here is there? Hm… How do you get a Blu-ray to play on your phone?”

“There’s no such thing, idiota.”

Karin winced. “Okay, okay. That’s fine! I can probably find the scenes I’m looking for online.” She put the disc back away and settled in back next to Alina, taking out her phone. “It’ll just take me a second to find… Er…”

The two of them stared at the low-battery indicator on Karin’s phone, without saying a word.

“…That’s okay!” Karin bounced up again to fish through the bag once more. “I brought the charger, so I’ll just plug it in, and–”

“In a damaged and abandoned building?” Alina asked skeptically. “There’s no chance that the power is still connected.”

“But then… how are we going to watch Machikado Mazoku?”

“Apparently we won’t be.”

Karin slumped dramatically. Alina just rolled her eyes. Karin rose back up after a few moments of drama, clenching her fists. “Okay! I’ll just have to make a resupply run. I’ll charge my phone, get some more food for you, let my family know that I’ll be staying with a friend tonight…”

Alina at first thought she had misheard, and took a few moments to reply. “What’s this about staying with a friend tonight?”

“Well, since you can’t take care of yourself, I obviously can’t leave you alone,” Karin stated, seeming almost puzzled that she would have to explain. “I can’t take you back to your house, since it got destroyed. I can’t leave you at the Coordinator’s right now, since, um… I don’t know that you’d be very welcome with the other magical girls. So, as your prison warden and rehabilitation officer, it falls on me to take care of you!”

“…Che cosa?”

“So just sit tight, and I’ll be back before you know it!” Karin barreled on cheerfully. She was all set to go and had her hand on the door when Alina stopped her with a question.

“Karin. Where is my soul gem?”

Karin froze, a deer in the headlights.

Surely she’d known that Alina would ask eventually. It hadn’t escaped Alina’s notice that her ring was missing, that her soul gem was nowhere to be seen. It wasn’t even that surprising, given the circumstances.

Karin turned her head partway, but wouldn’t meet Alina’s eyes. “…I’m sorry, senpai. I’m not sure I can trust you with it right now. I promise it’s safe, just… give me some time. Okay?”

There was a long silence between them. Finally Alina hung her head. It was an understandable reaction, and the fool girl would have deserved a scolding if she’d been fool enough to just hand it over. “That’s fine. Go do your errands.”

“Right! See you soon!” Karin left, closing the door behind her.

Alina listened carefully until she couldn’t hear Karin’s footsteps anymore, and then waited a bit longer, counting the seconds. After a couple of minutes she was certain: Karin must certainly be beyond the range of a soul gem right now. Which meant that she wasn’t carrying Alina’s soul gem with her right now. It had to be hidden somewhere nearby, for Alina to be conscious like this.

“…Not that knowing that will help me if I can’t even walk,” Alina muttered to herself. Whatever. One thing at a time. For now, she would rest.

The room was much quieter without Karin here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's interesting trying to write characters in wildly different situations than we them in in canon, I have to put more thought into how I think they'd react instead of letting my brain auto-fill their voices. In canon (at least, as far Arc 1) we don't see how Karin would react to learning about what Alina has been up to, or how Alina would try to explain herself to Karin. And that's a shame. But that's why this fic exists.
> 
> I'm kind of making up rules for the consequences of the Uwasa of the Fur God, but I think it's all within the bounds of what makes sense based on the information given by the game. Fighting like you don't expect to see tomorrow can be rough when you actually survive!
> 
> I'm also sort of assuming things about the state of the city post-battle. We know that Walpurgisnacht was throwing around literal buildings, we know that Eve was spreading fires, and we see in Cherry Blossom Dreams that parts of the city are still pretty damaged. Sakae Ward, where Alina was purportedly born and raised, is on the edge of Kamihama bordering the harbor. Walpurgisnacht both approached by sea and was pushed back towards the harbor for the turnabout, so the areas on that side of the city probably took a fair bit of damage during the fight.
> 
> The anime that Karin attempts to watch was originally going to be a generic magical girl show, but I didn't like having to dance around saying a title for it, and then I had an idea and went with it. Machikado Mazoku, aka The Demon Girl Next Door, is an absolutely fantastic anime and manga and everyone should watch/read it. It is exceptionally cute and heartwarming, and in the unlikely event that it ever has a crossover event in Magia Record I would drop all of my savings plans to roll for Shamiko and Momo, and might even break my f2p status for it. It's good! Alina, you could learn things from it!
> 
> I'm experimenting a bit with my writing style here, particularly with regards to use of ellipses for passage of time and breaking up blocks of writing. We'll see how it goes!


	3. The Meaning of Death | Through Her Eyes

_~ Interlude: Karin’s Side ~_

Karin put her hand on the doorknob and paused to ready herself. Deep breath. Big smile. She threw the door open and entered the room with aplomb. “I’m back! Sorry I took so long, my parents were worried about me being away overnight, y’know, so soon after the storm and all, only it wasn’t really a storm but they don’t know that, but I told them I had a friend who had their house damaged and needed emotional support, and my grandma helped bring my parents around, only then I–”

“You’re babbling,” Alina said dryly. She seemed like the same old Alina that Karin had always known. She had a sharp tongue, a short temper, and no tolerance for nonsense, but she was actually nice underneath it all and she would always take the time to hear Karin out and give her guidance, even when it took away from Alina’s time working on her own art (and there was very little that Alina cared about more than her own art).

But Karin couldn’t help but remember the Alina that she’d seen yesterday, smiling in ecstasy as the city burned down, ranting about killing people. She’d always thought that Alina could get a little scary when she got into the deep throes of her artistic creation, but she’d never imagined that Alina could get _that_ far gone.

She tried to shove all of that aside, hoping it didn’t show on her face too much, and made sure to smile for Alina. She put down her new bag of supplies next to the old one and pulled out the item at the top: a take-out box. “I hope you’re hungry, because I brought pasta! Pasta is Italian, right?”

“I don’t see what that has to do with anything, but si, pasta originated in Italy.” Alina seemed moody, the same as when she was having trouble with a piece of art, or when she was displeased with Karin’s latest manga draft. But then, after a few moments Alina swallowed her pride and said “Thank you for doing this,” and it reminded Karin why she’d come to respect her senpai so much in the first place.

“No problem!” Karin sat down next to Alina on the bed and opened the take-out box. “Now, say aah!”

Alina looked angry at first, and then she just looked embarrassed, a rare sight. Karin wondered if there was any way she could take a picture without Alina noticing. It could be a great reference for later! Eventually Alina opened her mouth to allow Karin to feed her, and it was fun. Karin could almost pretend that this was just a fun sleepover with the senpai that she admired.

Almost.

She kept trying to pretend even after feeding Alina dinner, as they watched anime on the laptop that Karin had managed to borrow, and then Karin lectured Alina on the important themes. Alina argued less than Karin had expected, which was maybe a good sign? After Karin’s third loud yawn, Alina insisted that they go to bed, which was probably a good idea, since the sun had gone down a while ago and they’d switched to using a flashlight since the apartment didn’t have working lights.

“This bed wasn’t built for two people,” Alina grumbled as Karin tried to arrange the both of them into a comfortable position.

“Sorry! I thought I could find a futon to use somewhere around here, but the only one that I could find was waterlogged…”

“You should’ve planned this better.”

“Yeah, I should have,” Karin admitted dejectedly. Something touched her hand, and she almost jumped. It was… Alina’s fingers? Karin’s eyes widened. “You’re moving your fingers!”

“Just a little,” Alina said, sounding frustrated. “I’m weak, not paralyzed. I think it’s a bit better than this morning. I’m still indifesa like a baby. But I’ll get better.”

“I’m glad,” Karin said, and she meant it, but there was a dark thought clawing it’s way up her throat. “Um… What will you do, once you’re better?”

“I don’t know yet.”

They were quiet for a bit after that. Karin turned off the flashlight, and they settled in to sleep. Still, she had one more thing to ask. She swallowed nervously before opening her mouth to voice the question. “Has… anything I’ve been telling you been getting through? About the value of life?”

In the darkness, she couldn’t tell if Alina was looking at her or not as she answered. “I’m not wrong,” Alina said softly. “Deep down, people crave death. Why else would so many people be entranced by my, Alina’s, art?”

Karin clenched her fingers hard enough to feel her nails digging in to her palm. “You still don’t understand that?” she whispered. “People aren’t fascinated by death because they want to die, Alina. They’re fascinated by death because they want to _live_. Looking at death reminds us that we’re alive.” It wasn’t something that Karin had thought deeply about before, but here and now, trying to find the words to say to Alina, this felt right. She was sure of it.

Alina didn’t reply. Karin waited for her to say something, to agree with her, to refute her, anything. But Alina didn’t reply.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This time it's a brief interlude from Karin's perspective. This'll be the shortest chapter in this work, and there'll be another Karin interlude later on of similar length. Early on I briefly entertained the idea of having a short Karin interlude at the end of every chapter, but it would've disrupted the mood that certain chapters end on, and then I ended up with a lot more chapters than I expected and not nearly enough good interlude ideas to justify the choice. And even this "short" piece ended up being longer than I wanted for a scene tacked onto the end of a chapter.
> 
> Karin's line here about the obsession with death coming from a desire to live was one of the big motivating factors for writing this story. I can see Alina's logic for why she thinks that humans crave death, but I disagree with her conclusion. I wonder if Alina would have arrived at a different answer if she'd ever discussed philosophy with anyone other than her fellow Magius, who, for all their intellect, have extremely distorted viewpoints and some massive blind spots.


	4. The Meaning of Regret | How to [Not] Make Amends

“Time to wake up! We’ve got a bright new day ahead of us!”

Alina groaned and opened her eyes just enough to glare at Karin. The girl was making a nuisance of herself, noisily unloading another of her supply packages while she babbled nonsense (something about breakfast?) at Alina. It was still too early, but it was apparent that she wasn’t going to get any more sleep than this. With considerable effort, she reached for her sketch pad to occupy herself with.

It had been a few days now since she’d first woken up in this abandoned apartment, and she _was_ recuperating, however slowly. Enough to hold light objects and draw, though it was difficult to keep her hands steady, and walking was still quite impossible. Karin was a frequent presence, both to look after her and to ‘educate’ her, though she had spent the last night at her own house, giving in to her family’s requests now that Alina was at least somewhat capable of taking care of herself as long as Karin left things within reach for her.

Alina still hadn’t contacted her own parents. The idiota kept bugging her about it, to her annoyance. It wasn’t as though she spoke much with them normally anyway. In a way, squatting in this apartment was like the private atelier that she had wished for, which was comforting.

Well, private with the exception of one girl.

“Alina! Come on, Alina, answer me! Aliiiiina!”

“Che palle!” Alina swore, putting down her sketch pad. “What? What do you want?”

“I was asking if an omelette sounded good to you!” Karin said cheerfully, holding up a carton of eggs in one hand and a frying pan in the other. “I figured you must be tired of take-out and leftovers by now, right? So I’ll cook something for you!”

“And just how do you intend to fry an omelette?” Alina asked, expecting that to be the end of things. “We have no gas and no power.”

“No problem!” Karin balanced the egg carton in the crook of her elbow so she had a free hand to materialize her soul gem, and then, in a flash of brilliant light, transformed into her magical girl outfit. She struck a pose and gave Alina a dazzling smile. “I actually have a bit of an affinity for fire magic!” she said proudly, summoning dancing purple flames above her palm. “This’ll be a piece of cake!”

“…Ah.” Alina turned her attention back to her sketchpad, ignoring the fool girl’s antics. “I can see how this will end.”

…

“Wah! Why is it turning black?! No, don’t burn! Why is it burning?!”

“Stai zitto, try to keep it down. I, Alina, am trying to focus.”

As the pile of balled-up scraps of paper beside Alina’s bed indicated, her art wasn’t going well. Part of it was the physical difficulty. It was hard to draw anything decent when just the exertion of holding a pen or brush would have her hand shaking. There were ways around that, styles that wouldn’t require precision, but… well. The physical struggle was just the beginning of Alina’s difficulties.

“Ugh, that’s the last of the eggs… Wait, why is it still on fire? Is the pan burning?!”

The fact of the matter was, Alina had put her all into what was supposed to have been her ultimate masterpiece. Using the ultimate Witch as the ultimate paintbrush, and painting a portrait of Kamihama’s destruction. Of the _world’s_ destruction, if she could manage it. The ultimate fulfillment of mankind’s greatest hidden desire, setting a torch to all of the barren and empty hearts she could reach in this twisted world. She had failed to create that masterpiece, and it was a feat that she would never get a second chance at, not with Eve gone. But even having failed, she had seen the completion of that work in her heart, and how could any lesser piece of art compete with that? Anything that she worked on now just felt like a waste of time, a useless trifle.

“Oh no! The floor! Go out, go out, go out! Uwah, stop spreading!”

But even that wasn’t Alina’s biggest problem. The biggest problem was Karin’s words, which bounced endlessly through her skull. _They’re fascinated by death because they want to live._ Even though they’d been looking at the same picture, they’d come to completely opposite conclusions about it. Alina wanted to deny it, to say there was no way that she could be wrong. But she’d been wrong before, when she’d tried to end her life as her final masterpiece, which would have been nothing but a waste, and Karin, who’d known better, had lectured her. This time she’d tried to end the lives of others as her final masterpiece, and if she was wrong this time, then…

Then what she’d tried to do wasn’t art. It was just ugly, senseless waste.

Karin slumped down onto the bed, spreading across Alina’s legs and jostling her sketchpad. “I did it… I got them all…”

Alina looked down at the girl before her, perplexed. “Is breakfast ready?”

A groan was her answer. “I’ll… go out and buy something,” Karin said, defeated. “I’ll just… be right back…” She slowly dragged herself off of Alina’s lap and trudged toward the door.

“Karin,” Alina spoke up suddenly, grabbing the girl’s attention before she could open the door. Even having started, it took Alina a few seconds to find the words to continue. She’d spoken up on impulse, but this was… difficult to ask. “What would Kirin do if she made a big mistake?”

“Kirin doesn’t make mistakes,” Karin said immediately.

Alina’s glare threatened to burn a hole through her.

“Oh! But, um, if she did… She would apologize and make amends.”

Alina nodded. “I see. …Grazie.”

Karin smiled at her. “No problem!”

…

…

With Karin out Alina was left with only her own thoughts for company, and they had been poor company as of late.

Apologizing? Who would she apologize to? She could apologize to Karin, she supposed. She had made quite a lot of trouble for Karin, after all, and she felt bad about that. Although… Karin had given her a great deal of help, of her own initiative. And as Kirin had said (in chapter 53, page 9, panel 4, and Alina could hardly believe that she knew that), when a friend helps you you don’t say ‘sorry’, you say ‘thank you’. So, apologizing to Karin might be out.

A public apology? Well, apologizing to the city wasn’t really feasible, since most of the city didn’t know about magical girls and nothing that Alina was apologizing for would make any sense. To the magical girl community of Kamihama, then? If Alina had truly been wrong about mankind’s impulse (which was still an _if_ , she wasn’t completely convinced yet), then she had done them a great deal of wrong. Though… she wasn’t sure she actually felt bad about it, the way that she did about inconveniencing Karin. Why should she care if a bunch of imbeciles had a hard time, or died? Hm, but thinking about it carefully, there might be some artists with untapped potential among them, and it would be hugely wasteful if they were to die, so she _did_ feel guilty about that. Ah, and there were some subjects she wasn’t quite done with yet. It would be nice to do a sculpture of Mifuyu’s perfect body, or an illustration of the invisible bonds between the flute sisters, so it would be distasteful if they had been killed…

Okay, she could probably stand to make an apology to the magical girl community, uncomfortable though that may be. But amends… What was she supposed to do to make amends? Hrm, maybe she could hand out grief seeds or something, that was something that all magical girls could appreciate.

She looked down at her sketchpad, realizing that she’d been idly doodling as she pondered. She’d ended up with something of a self-portrait, though rather simplistic and sloppy, certainly not up to her own high standards. There was something about it, though… She chuckled darkly as she realized what it was.

She’d only drawn a head, without a body. Well, that could be considered a sort of amends, she supposed.

…

She didn’t have much warning. Absorbed as she was in her thoughts and her art, she didn’t notice the approaching footsteps at all, had no idea anyone was even there until a sword tore through the door’s hinges and the door was thrown inwards.

Three figures in black cloaks rushed into the room, immediately and frantically checking every corner of the room as if in paranoid fear that something or someone might jump out. Black Feathers, the grunts of the Wings of the Magius. Well, an expandable labor force is what they really were.

They all bristled with danger.

“I can’t believe it, it really was her.” “I told you! I’d never mistake that magic signature!” “W-What should we do? It’s _Alina Gray_ , w-we should’ve brought more people!” “It’s fine! It’s three on one, in close quarters, and we’re trained to work together. We’ve got this!”

“Hey.” Alina’s unconcerned greeting snapped them out of their conversation, and weapons were drawn, swords and scythes and chains made ready for battle. “Whatever you’re here for, it’s rude to damage someone else’s property, no?”

The three of them all seemed taken aback by that. The first one to recover stepped forward boldly, her twin swords floating at her side. “How _dare_ you! You, of all people!”

“Ah.” That’s right. Come to think of it, Eve would have destroyed quite a bit of property that wasn’t Alina’s. It probably wouldn’t be tactful to tell them that it was different if it was done for art. In which case… She had probably best start here. “You’re right. I, Alina, offer my apologies for that. Mi dispiace.”

There was another gap of silence as the girls tried to process Alina’s words. “Your… _apologies?_ We didn’t come here for your _apologies!”_ A sword was launched across the room, slamming into the wall scant inches from Alina’s face.

“I was there, you know, I saw everything,” one of the other Feathers in the back spoke up, her eyes hidden but her gaze unmistakably fixed on Alina. “After everything we did, you betrayed us. You tried to kill… _everyone_ , and now, you think it’s okay for you to just… lounge around in bed, drawing?!”

Alina sighed. No one else understood. No, even Alina didn’t really understand. She always pursued what appealed to her, what felt right to her, Alina’s Beauty, and the world craved that beauty, craved her art, so it had to be okay. But what made something beautiful? She always followed her instincts, but she didn’t understand it, and sometimes she made mistakes. There were things she regretted. Karin’s words echoed in her mind.

Maybe… she’d been making mistakes from the beginning.

“I’m sorry for what I’ve done,” Alina said aloud. “I… was wrong.”

The closest of the Black Feathers laughed, a note of dangerous hysteria that drew all eyes to her. “Sorry, she says! Well gee, doesn’t that just fix everything!” She moved suddenly, darting forward to clamp her hand around Alina’s throat, then roughly dragging Alina out of the bed and slamming her to the floor. _“Sorry!”_ she snarled again. “Are you _mocking_ us? Do you think that we’ll leave you alone just because you said _sorry?_ Do you think we’ll go easy on you just because you’re not fighting back?!”

“There’s no point in dragging this out or provoking her,” a voice spoke up, one of the other Feathers though Alina couldn’t be sure which, preoccupied as she was with struggling to breathe. “Just get it over with. Break her soul gem so she can’t hurt anyone anymore.”

“Yeah, yeah, I got it.” A rough hand pinned Alina’s wrist to the floor. “…Hey, it’s not here! She’s got no ring on.”

The room seemed to be spinning, probably owing to the firm impact Alina’s head had made with the floor. She heard muddied voices arguing, but it was hard to tell which was which.

“Is she holding it somewhere?” “M-Maybe we should just go. This isn’t… how I thought things would be.” “No, we’ve come too far to back down now.”

Alina’s body was too weak to put up a proper struggle, but her mind supplied a thought as sharp as a knife, and she fought to get the words out. “Will revenge… make you feel… better?”

The Black Feather sneered down at her. “This isn’t revenge, this is _justice_. It’s what you deserve for everything you’ve done.”

Justice. It was a far cry from the justice and heroism of Karin’s beloved manga, but… it really might be the right thing. Alina wasn’t afraid of death. Maybe something was wrong with her, but she really wasn’t afraid of it. She lived for art, but if she had already peaked as an artist, if she could never do any better than her failed masterpiece, then was there a point in continuing to live? She’d caused Karin so much trouble, wouldn’t it be easier for Karin if Alina was gone? She’d been told to make amends, and couldn’t accepting justice be considered a form of that?

Being killed by the girls that had once served her, that she had turned her back on, in a revenge that was called justice. Rising high enough to use the world as her canvas only to die like this, weak and helpless. Wasn’t there a twisted beauty in that?

Alina’s sharp laughter drew a flinch out of the Black Feather. “Crazy bitch. What’s so funny?”

“Don’t indulge her,” another voice aid, another cloaked figure stepping forward. “I can feel her magical signature, I can track her soul gem.” A blurry streak of motion, the sweep of a scythe, the appearance different from Karin’s weapon. The bed was sliced clean in twain, and the offender shoved the separated pieces aside to reach beneath the wreckage, lifting up a box that had been lying under the bed. It was wrapped in chains and a heavy lock, but underneath that Alina recognized it as, of all things, a Phantom Thief Magical Kirin lunchbox.

Alina laughed even harder, hard enough that she choked. It had been right under her bed the whole time.

Another swing of the scythe cut through chains and lunchbox alike, opening the container by slicing off the top of it, and the Feather then reached inside and pulled out a beautiful egg-shaped emerald gem.

Alina stiffened at the touch, she could _feel_ the fingers on her soul gem, and it wasn’t a pleasant sensation.

“H-Hold on, I really don’t feel good about this anymore…”

“No, it’s time to end this.”

“I’ll do it.”

The soul gem was tossed into the air.

A sword cut a deadly arc.

The sword completed its swing, impacting the wooden floor with a crashing thunk.

…

But there was no sound of a gem shattering.

Alina breathed out.

“Did you miss?” “I couldn’t have missed! Where the hell did it go?” “It was right there, where could it have gone?” “I don’t know, it just disappeared!” “Eep! W-Where did you come from!”

All eyes turned to the door, and the figure standing there huffing for breath, one arm extended, with a green soul gem clasped in her fingers. A magical girl dressed as a cute witch, with purple hair that Alina would recognize anywhere. The only magical girl in the city that could so casually Steal a soul gem.

The crude Feather with the swords stepped toward the door, no longer paying attention to Alina. “Hey, I don’t know who you are, but if you know what’s good for you you’ll hand that over. We’ve got you outnumbered here, so don’t get any funny ideas.”

Alina tried to reach for the girl’s cloak and missed, and inwardly she cursed her weakness. How _dare_ this thug threaten _her_ Karin, whose worst sins had been being overenthusiastic and submitting subpar art!

“Get out of here,” Karin said in a low, serious voice. Her hat was pulled low over her face, hiding her eyes. She radiated danger in a way that Alina wouldn’t have been able to imagine before she had battled Karin herself.

“We’re not leaving here until we’ve crushed that soul gem,” the Black Feather with the scythes spoke up, backing up her ally.

Karin took a deep breath. The Feathers moved, suddenly striking out, and a bright light flared out from Karin, blinding everyone in the room. When Alina could see again she found that Karin had crossed the room, moving from the doorway to just in front of Alina, between her and the attackers.

And she wasn’t dressed like a witch anymore.

A cloak of white fur, adorned with a horned deer head with feathery wings emerging from the eye sockets, and six hooved legs sticking out from the cloak like misbegotten wings. The Uwasa of the Fur God, which Karin had stolen from Alina.

“W-What is–?” “Shit! This is bad! Isn’t that–” “So what? We can take her!”

“You can leave,” Karin said in an icy tone that lacked any of her usual playfulness, “or I can make you leave.”

“Oh yeah?” The brash fool with the swords stepped up again, sneering. “You and what army?”

The whole room seemed to tremble. Candies streamed out of Karin’s cloak, floating around her, and they were joined by the wreckage of the bed, the shattered chains, the bisected lunchbox, the door that had been knocked in, the pen and sketchpad that Alina had dropped, the bags full of manga and supplies that Karin had been bring by. Every object in the room that wasn’t nailed down lifted into the air, imbued with Karin’s magic that was being amplified by the Uwasa.

And then, as one, every object turned in midair so that the pointiest end faced the Black Feathers.

There was a single silent moment where no one dared to breathe.

And then the Black Feathers were halfway down the hallway, booking it away from there as fast as their feet could carry them.

Karin took a deep breath. There was a flash of light as she reverted to her regular magical girl form, and then a second flash as she released that too and went back to just regular Karin. There was a clatter as all the objects fell to the floor.

With significant effort, Alina managed to raise herself up to a half-sitting position. “That was mangifico, Karin. You did a good–”

_Slap!_

Alina fell back to the floor, stunned, one hand clutching her stinging cheek. That had been a _fierce_ slap, and Karin seemed to be cradling her own slapping hand as well, but that was a mere footnote in Alina’s brain because for the first time since Karin had entered the room Alina had a good look at her face. Tears were streaming down her cheeks, and her expression was of such anguish that for a moment Alina thought that she must have been injured somehow.

“Stupid! You’re so, so, stupid, senpai!” Karin sobbed. “I thought, that you, were going to die! It was so, so, so, so close! I thought, that I was gonna, gonna lose you!” She threw herself at Alina, burying her head in Alina’s shoulder, much to the professional artist’s bewilderment. “You should have, should have done something! Fought back, or, or, shouted for help, or something! Called for me! What were you thinking?!”

Alina responded the only way she knew how: honestly. “Like you said, I did something wrong, no? Therefore it is only naturale that I, Alina, would be punished. If that sort of justice is the consequence of pursuing my art, then so be it. I won’t run from it.”

Karin’s fist pounded against Alina’s chest, once, twice, a third time, prompting a series of winces “Stupid! Idiota, you’re an idiota! That _is_ running! You can’t die, Alina! You can’t! I won’t let you!” Karin had stopped beating her fists against Alina, and was now just tightly clenching Alina’s shirt. “Dying won’t fix anything! You have to serve your sentence properly, and that means you have to live!”

Slowly, carefully, Alina wrapped her arms around the trembling, crying girl lying atop her, offering what little comfort she could. “…Very well,” she said in a soothing, placating voice. “I, Alina, will swear it to you. I will live.”

As they lay there, locked together, while Karin slowly got a handle on her overflowing emotions, Alina couldn’t get the sight of Karin’s face out of her mind. The image of Karin in anguish was seared into her memory. It was such a desperate, broken, _human_ expression of pain. As an artist, she knew with all her heart that it would make for a truly beautiful painting, a showcase of the depth of human emotion.

And yet, just the thought of Karin’s expression made some part of Alina ache with indescribable pain. It was something she never wanted to see again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that got intense!
> 
> We're starting to see Alina second-guess herself here. It's a delicate writing process, trying to make this seem believable for Alina and not just wildly out of character, so feel free to let me know how I did! She's a complicated person. Mix together a general lack of empathy for people, an interest in Karin's emotional development, a lack of regard for her own life, a great deal of passion for art, a lack of self-understanding of her own instinctive sense of beauty, at least some awareness of right and wrong (but a lack of interest in it), a desire to change the world, and some really wild mood swings... I don't think she'd be easily swayed by moral or emotional pleas, but being challenged on her art itself can really knock her off balance. I have a lot to say about her, but I should probably save it for later.
> 
> Tangent: It's awkward to describe Karin's magical girl appearance, because she very obviously looks like a witch, but saying she looks like a witch has a very different meaning in the context of this series!
> 
> Behind the scenes time: Holy Karin was a surprise for me, I wasn't planning to do that until I was already writing this chapter. Karin had stolen the Uwasa in the first chapter to depower Alina, but I wasn't planning to do anything more with that until my brain started pestering me about 'shouldn't you do something to follow up on that?' So what would have been a run-in with a single Black Feather turned into three, to get Karin to pull out the big guns. Technically the Uwasa isn't designed to be used as a power-amplifier, but based on how Holy Alina is depicted, I think it's safe to say that it DOES make the wearer stronger, even if that's not the main purpose. I kind of wanted Karin to give a speech about being "the magical girl born of Christmas", but it didn't feel right for the mood, even if I tried to use the excuse of the Uwasa messing with her emotions. She was not messing around here, being scared out of her mind that Alina would have died if she'd been even a second slower. Maybe I'll write another fic sometime with Christmas Karin.


	5. The Meaning of Trust | What Friends Are For

“Okay, I think that’s just about everything!” Karin, in her magical girl outfit, finished tying the last of her bags of ‘learning material’ to her scythe, which was currently hovering above the floor.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Alina asked skeptically, staring at the flying object.

“No problem! A little extra weight won’t make much of a difference. It’s magic!”

“It’s not just the weight I’m worried about,” Alina grumbled under her breath, but she knew there’d be no dissuading the idiota. She could be impressively stubborn when she dug her heels in, and Alina didn’t particularly have a better idea anyway.

After the abandoned apartment had been attacked by the Black Feathers, the two of them had agreed that it was too dangerous for Alina to stay here. They had eventually decided to wait until nightfall before making their move in order to avoid attracting attention, and had whiled the day away reading manga and avoiding talking about anything too serious. The mood had felt fragile for much of the day, but Karin seemed to be in good spirits again now, which made Alina feel better as well. It just… felt right, somehow.

“Okay Alina, now it’s your turn!”

“So I, Alina, am no different from luggage now?”

“Jeez, that’s not what I mean!” Karin puffed out her cheeks in mock indignation. “Are you ready?”

Alina sighed. It was no good putting it off anymore. “Si.”

Karin had to help lift her and set her onto the scythe, since Alina’s legs were still refusing to hold up her body weight. “Okay, just hold on tight,” Karin instructed as she settled onto the scythe in front of Alina.

“You know full well that my grip strength is molto terribile right now,” Alina complained as she wrapped her arms around Karin. “If you try to pull any fancy maneuvers, the genius artist Alina Gray will become a beautiful red smear on the streets.”

“That would be bad!” Karin _hmm’d_ as she considered the problem. “Maybe if I just…” She shifted on the pole. With both of them seated sideways, as though on a bench, Karin was able to wrap one arm around Alina and hold onto the scythe with her other hand. “There! Now I’ve got you, and I won’t let you go!”

Did this idiota think about the things she was saying? “That will do, I suppose. Just… fly carefully.”

“Right!”

Karin lifted off and carefully guided the scythe through the rundown apartment building and out into the open night air, ascending into the sky like an old-fashioned witch on a broomstick. The city spread out below them, giving off an entirely different feeling than seeing the city from the ground. The way the city lights shone brightly enough that the light pollution largely blocked out the stars made it seem as though the city had plucked the stars out of the sky to illuminate itself with.

The sight reminded Alina of the last time that she’d seen Kamihama from the skies. Not so long ago, when she had been riding atop Eve, sowing destruction across the city. The view now was completely different from that time. That view had been bleak, a city rendered monochrome by the storm and alight with spreading flames, while this was peaceful, a tranquil metropolis still awake after sunset.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Karin asked, grinning back at Alina.

Alina blinked. Was that how this girl saw it? For her, this peaceful place of life was more beautiful than the barren land of devastation that Alina had envisioned. Looking at the genuine smile on Karin’s face, her innocent delight at sharing this secret sight with a friend, Alina felt as though she could capture a piece of how Karin saw the world.

“It isn’t bad,” Alina said aloud, falling back on her artistic critical analysis. “Though painting landscapes isn’t usually my style.”

“That’s not true,” Karin said with a laugh. “You told me, your theme is Alina’s Beauty. Whatever you find beautiful, right? So if you thought it was beautiful, you could even do a painting of this!”

“Just keep your eyes forward,” Alina told her, abandoning the argument rather than risk being defeated by the idiota.

“Right, right. Don’t worry, I know where I’m going! We’ll be there before you know it.”

Ah, right. Their destination. That was something that had been troubling Alina.

“…Karin,” Alina spoke up, starting with using Karin’s name so that she’d know this wasn’t a subject to be flippant about. “Are you sure this is okay?”

To her credit, Karin kept her eyes forward this time as she replied. “Is what okay? Don’t worry, this much weight isn’t any trouble at all.”

“Not that. Taking me to your house.”

“…Oh. That.”

…

“…Yeah. It’s fine.”

Alina frowned. “Are you sure? I had thought that the reason that you hadn’t taken me to your home from the beginning was that you didn’t trust me to be around your family.”

Karin seemed surprised by that, and her grip on Alina tightened slightly. “Oh. Haha, so you thought that? Um… You’re not really wrong…”

She trailed off again, and Alina gave her time to find her words.

“When I first found you on _that_ day, I felt like I didn’t even know you anymore. But since then… I feel like I understand you better now. So, yeah. You haven’t graduated from Karin’s Rehab School or anything, but I don’t think you’ll do anything bad to my family. So. It’s fine.”

“…I understand.” And that was all that really needed to be said. For a time after that, they flew in companionable silence.

…

…

It didn’t take long for them to make it to Karin’s house. “Here we are,” the girl in question said, hovering over it. “Um…”

“What is it?” Alina asked, cocking her head in curiosity.

“I just realized… I don’t know how I’m going to get all this stuff inside,” Karin said, looking down at her bags of manga, Blu-rays, and other supplies. “I can’t just fly in in Magical Karin mode, my parents are home. And you can’t help carry it. And I don’t think I can carry all of this while also carrying you…”

“The weather is clear tonight, no? Just leave it on the roof, you can sneak it inside later.”

“Yeah… Yeah! That’ll work. Thanks Alina!”

“Mm.”

In short order Karin had deposited the bags on the roof and lowered the two of them to the ground. Karin dismissed her magical girl outfit and, with some effort, managed to get Alina situated in a piggy-back position, with Alina’s arms over Karin’s shoulders and Karin’s arms around Alina’s legs. It was a bit awkward, especially since Alina was taller than Karin, but fortunately magical girls had strength to spare even when not transformed, and they made it work.

“This is undignified,” Alina complained half-heartedly.

“I could carry you over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes,” Karin joked.

“Is that how you got me to that apartment in the first place?”

“Er…”

Alina sighed. “Very well. I, Alina, shall allow you to carry me like this. Let’s head in.”

“Right!”

Karin approached the door and managed to extract one hand long enough to unlock and open the door. “Mom, Dad, I’m home!” she called as she entered the house, carefully managing to slip her shoes off without losing her balance and dropping Alina.

“Welcome back.” A man that could only have been Karin’s father approached. “You shouldn’t stay out so late, Karin. You know how your mother feels…”

“I know, I know, but it couldn’t be helped this time!”

Her dad nodded, apparently accepting it. His eyes fell upon Alina. “This is the friend you were talking about, then? Here, let me help get her to the couch…”

“I’ve got her,” Karin said, fending off her father’s attempts to help as though possessive of Alina. It was an amusing sight to see, like a free circus act, or so Alina mused to herself. Karin managed to deposit Alina onto one of the couches, more-or-less gently.

Alina only noticed the other woman in the room, presumably Karin’s mother, when she spoke up. “Does she need medical attention? You never said what kind of injuries she has.”

“The doctor said she’ll make a full recovery, she just needs lots of rest right now.” “I’m still not sure why she has to stay at _our_ house while she recovers.” “I told you, her home situation is really complicated right now!” “Yes, but that doesn’t mean–” “Now dear, it’s the least we can do to lend a helping hand when there are others worse off than us. But Karin, it would be nice if we could speak with her parents about this.” “Er, right, but you see…”

An old woman sat down next to Alina on the couch, blessedly distracting her from Karin’s tedious back-and-forth with her parents. “You must be Karin’s artist friend,” the old woman said with kindly interest. “I’ve heard so much about you from her!”

“Ah, yes.” She felt a little off-balance, wondering just what Karin had said about her. Probably mostly a bunch of drivel about how good of an artist she was (not that that was inaccurate). “I’m Alina Gray, ma’am. You must be Karin’s grandmother?”

“No need to be formal with me,” Karin’s grandmother said cheerily, patting Alina’s arm. “You can just call me Grannie. With how much Karin talks about you, it almost feels like you’re part of the family already.”

“Mm.” Alina wasn’t sure how she felt about _that_. She barely got along with her own family, she hardly needed more of that. Especially if the rather heated discussion going on right now was anything to go by.

Grannie must have seen her discomfort and her glance toward the trio of Karin and parents, and come to her own conclusion. “Here now, do we really need to have all this bickering? We have a guest here, and one that needs her rest at that, and all of this noise is being a bother.”

Karin’s father reddened in embarrassment. “We’re not really _bickering_ , Mother, this is an important discussion–”

“Then perhaps you can have it _somewhere else?_ ” Grannie asked, gently but with a certain edge.

“Ah… Yes, I suppose we can continue this in the other room.”

Karin marched over and leaned in close to Alina’s face, commanding her attention. “Shout for me if you need _anything_ , okay? I mean it. Don’t hold back.”

She must have still been upset that Alina had made no attempt to call for help when she had been attacked this morning. “I, Alina, do so promise,” Alina swore, just a bit exasperated. “Just take care not to go too far.” Karin was still holding onto Alina’s soul gem, so it would get awkward if she got too far away from Alina’s body.

Karin nodded and followed her parents into the other room.

“I’m glad to see you two getting along so well,” Grannie spoke up, getting Alina’s attention again. “Karin has a hard time sometimes, and there’s only so much that I can do. Thank you for being her friend.”

“Hmph. I don’t think that I did anything to be thanked for. That ridicola girl is stubborn like a mule, I couldn’t get away from her even if I tried.”

“Oh? The way she tells it, you’re always helping her out.”

Alina frowned. It was true that she critiqued the girl’s manga projects, and she had done the costume designs for that absurd Halloween play. But being praised for that made her feel uncomfortable. “I just did what I felt like doing. Besides, it isn’t much compared to the trouble I’ve put her through. It’s frustrating, but I’m in her debt.”

Grannie laughed kindly. “I’m sure that she feels indebted to you as well. It’s okay to help and be helped, you know. Friends are people that help each other without asking anything in return.”

Alina’s eyes narrowed. That line… she was certain she’d heard it before. “Is that a quote from…?”

“Phantom Thief Magical Kirin!” Grannie finished happily. “You read it too? My, it’s quite exciting, isn’t it? I started reading it to have something to talk to my granddaughter about, and now I’m quite hooked on it!”

“It’s very well-written,” Alina conceded. “The author has a good grasp on the series’ strengths and has built up a strong sense of narrative identity. Even though it tends to re-use a lot of the same story structure over and over, the details change enough to keep the readers invested.”

“You’ve thought quite a lot about it!” Grannie sounded impressed, and Alina despaired a bit at how much time she’d spent on that manga. Karin was rubbing off on her.

“As an artist, examining works that can harness a sense of universal appeal is useful for my own technique,” Alina explained.

“Oh ho, I see!”

…

It was easier to talk to Karin’s grandmother than Alina had expected. Alina didn’t think of herself as much of a talker, but Grannie kept coaxing more out of her. She didn’t even really notice it until Karin returned and Alina realized that she’d been conversing the entire time.

“We got it all figured out,” Karin said cheerfully, though she looked worn out. “You’re sleeping in my bed, and we put down a futon next to it for me to sleep on. You can stay here as long as you need to. Oh, and my dad is gonna try to find a wheelchair for until you can walk again, but you’re till gonna need someone to help you push it around.”

“Grazie.” Alina tapped her fingers against the couch thoughtfully. “We should go to your room, then. I have something to discuss with you.”

“Well then, I’ll help you get moved,” Grannie said.

Karin quickly moved to cut her off. “Grandma, no! You’re going to hurt yourself. I can carry Alina on my own.”

Grannie chuckled. “Well alright then. I’ll leave you kids to yourselves.”

As promised, Karin managed to move Alina from the couch to the bed on her own, without even dropping Alina or banging her against a wall, though there was a close call or two. Once they’d gotten situated, with the door closed and Karin seated beside Alina on the bed, Alina brought up the subject that had crossed her mind.

“If I stay here, there’s a chance that I’ll be attacked again by fools with a grudge,” she stated bluntly.

Karin puffed up angrily and raised her hands in a mock fighting stance. “I’ll fight them off if they try! You’re in my care, I won’t let anything happen to you.”

Alina rolled her eyes. “That’s all well and good, but your house and your family could get caught in the crossfire, no? It would trouble me if that happened, after all you and your family are doing for me.”

Karin looked at her oddly. “If this is all leading up to you saying I should abandon you somewhere, I’ll slap you again.”

Alina’s eyebrow twitched. “Don’t be ridicolo. To avoid being attacked we just need to conceal the presence of my soul gem. I should’ve thought of it sooner, but I’m not used to taking that kind of precaution.”

“Er… Conceal it?”

“Yes. If we wrap it in a barrier that blocks magical signatures then no one will be able to track it anymore. It shouldn’t be difficult.”

“Uh… Alina, I can’t make barriers…”

“That’s merda, of course you can.”

“No, I can’t!”

Frowning, Alina scratched her head. “Very well. I, Alina, will give you a lesson on the abilities of magical girls.”

Now it was Karin’s turn to frown. “You know, I’ve been doing this longer than you have!”

“Then why don’t you know these things?” Alina snapped reflexively, the words out of her mouth before she could think better of it. She raised her hand when Karin opened her mouth, having no interest in getting into an argument over her slip. “Wait. Ne me frega. I don’t really care about this sort of topic, but I worked with a showoff genius that liked to listen to herself speak, so I overheard more lectures than I care for. Just listen to me, si?”

Karin nodded, albeit reluctantly, which was good enough for Alina.

“As I’m sure you know, all magical girls have their own unique specialty magic. Supposedly it relates to their wish, but that’s not important. You have your stealing, and I, Alina, specialize in barriers.”

“Right, which is why I can’t make a barrier.”

“Stai zitto! Wait until I’m finished. Regardless of specialty, all magical girls are capable of general sorts of magic. Healing our wounds, reinforcing our bodies, tracking magical patterns, imbuing physical objects with magic, and so on. Some things come more easily to some than others. I was told that most veterans develop a number of tricks outside of their specialty.”

“Oh, like my Candy Death Squall!” Karin spoke up excitedly.

Alina nodded. “Barriers are also something that any magical girl should be able to create. It may work differently for different girls, and certainly you’ll never match _my_ power and versatility with barriers, but something small like this should be within your capabilities. I’m sure of it.”

“Okay, but…” Karin frowned. “How do I do it? I’ve never really done something like that before.”

“Hm…” Alina scratched her head and frowned, frustrated. “I’m no professoressa. Explaining it is difficult.” She paused. “There is one way I could teach you, but…”

“What?”

“…I could show you,” Alina said carefully.

Silence filled the space between them. The room seemed too stuffy all of a sudden, the air stagnant. A subject they’d been avoiding discussing had been brought back to the surface.

“…If I give you back your soul gem, you mean,” Karin finally said.

Alina nodded silently.

Karin was blatantly hesitant. “I know that I said I trusted you with my family, but… Alina, can I trust you with this?”

Alina considered the matter carefully. Could Karin trust her? Karin had said earlier that she felt like she understood Alina better now, but Alina didn’t even understand herself very well. She knew herself to be moody, irrational, and to prioritize art above all else. She had made mistakes. She hardly trusted her own self right now. “I promise to only use it to teach you, and to return it afterward, until you’re ready for me to have it.” It was strange, to be more comfortable trusting the idiota than herself, but when Alina had made her biggest mistakes Karin had always been there afterward, to reprimand her and help her pick up the pieces.

“But will you really give it back?” Karin asked insistently, searching Alina’s eyes.

Alina sighed. “Karin, in all the time that you’ve known me, have I, Alina, ever lied to you?”

Karin gave it some thought. “No… Actually you’re too proud to break your word,” she said with a chuckle.

That didn’t really sound like a compliment, but it would do. “There you have it. Even if you can’t trust my choices, you can trust my promise. I will only use it to teach you barriers, and then I will return it.”

Karin nodded. “Okay. Let’s do it!” She got up and locked the door to her room, and then, upon returning, presented Alina with a familiar viridiscent soul gem.

Alina took a deep breath as she gently took hold of her literal soul. This was the first time that she’d been so long apart from it. But… holding it made less of a difference than she’d expected. It didn’t do anything to help her recover from the effects of overusing the Uwasa of the Fur God, nor did it erase the mistakes she’d made. It was comfortable knowing exactly where it was, but the difference wasn’t stark.

Huh. It seemed that she really did trust Karin with her soul gem. Interesting.

The room was briefly bathed in light as the two of them transformed at once. “Now, pay attention,” Alina instructed. “And not just with your eyes. Get a feel for the magic energy I’m using.”

“Right!”

Alina reached up to her soul gem, where it was tied to her outfit at the base of her throat, and drew on its power. It was less forthcoming than usual, no doubt another side effect of the life force she’d spent on the Uwasa, but she was still able to channel more than enough for a task like this. A cube of green energy surrounded her soul gem, then shrunk to conform to the gem’s shape.

“Oh!” Karin leaned in close to get a good look. “That’s amazing. I can’t feel your magical pattern at all now!”

“Of course not,” Alina said smugly, casually reaching back to flip her hair. “Compared to the barrier I maintained over the city, this is a simple task. It’s just a matter of blocking out the magical energy coming from my soul gem, while filtering it so that it doesn’t block my body’s connection to the soul gem.”

“That… doesn’t sound that simple.”

“It’s no problem. Just copy what I’m doing. Here, I’ll show you again.”

“Hrm…” Karin raised her hands, and after a few moments a light began to shine between her palms.

“…Karin, that is a flame, not a barrier,” Alina noted, protectively covering her soul gem with her hand.

“I’ve never made a barrier! Here, I’ll give it another try…”

…

…

…

In the end, it took longer than Alina had patience for. She couldn’t find the frame of mind to get into an art session while Karin was still attempting to form a barrier and badgering Alina for advice and examples, so she found herself flipping through some of Karin’s manga instead, occasionally making an example barrier when the idiota begged her to see it again.

Success came abruptly and unexpectedly. “I did it!” Karin exclaimed excitedly, jumping to her feet. “Senpai, I did it! I got it to work!”

Alina looked blankly at where Karin had been testing with her own soul gem. “You… put a candy wrapper around it?”

“Yep!” Karin declared proudly.

Alina stared at it. A candy wrapper. Really. But it _was_ true that Alina could no longer detect the presence of Karin’s magic with her soul gem. “I, Alina, cannot believe this. How did that work?”

“Well, you know!” Karin sat back down on the bed, holding up her candy-wrapped soul gem proudly. “I always had a hard time attacking with my magic, until I figured out that I can just use it to charge things up and attack with _those_. So I figured, if I’m having a hard time making a barrier, why not just do the same thing? I just charge the candy wrapper with magic, and tweak it so that it feels like your barrier. Imbuing the magic is easier than making something out of it!”

“…I’m not sure if you’re stupid or brilliant.”

“It works, doesn’t it? I must be brilliant!”

Alina laughed. Certainly, she couldn’t imagine anyone else coming up with a solution like this. It was crude, but so inherently _Karin,_ and there was a certain charm in that. “Very well. You did a good job, Karin.” Alina reversed her magical girl transformation and held out her soul gem to Karin.

Karin seemed surprised, even though it was what they had agreed on. “Are… are you sure?” she asked hesitantly.

Alina rolled her eyes and gestured with her soul gem. “Yes, yes, I’m sure. I promised, no? I trust you. Keep it safe.”

Karin’s eyes widened, and she nodded fervently. “Yeah. Yeah! I’ll definitely keep it safe for you!” She took hold of Alina’s soul gem and tenderly wrapped a candy wrapper around it.

The smile on Karin’s face was… dazzling. An expression full of happiness, infectious in its delight. It was unlike anything that Alina had ever drawn before, but… As an artist, there was no denying it.

The sight before her eyes was beautiful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Grannie Misono! I wonder if I should add a character tag for her, just for fun. You'll notice that she wastes no time insisting on being called Grannie, because we don't know her name and I was not going to spend the whole chapter finding creative ways to keep writing "Karin's grandmother" every time I referred to her. Anyway, she's a sweetie. We only see a very small bit of her in Karin's MGS, but I feel like we get a pretty good feel for her character in that short time. Or maybe I was just influenced by seeing her in an AliKari fan comic. Either way, I had no trouble visualizing her.
> 
> So, the magic explanation. I'm pretty much making stuff up, but this IS all at least rooted in canon. In Madoka Magica we see Kyoko making some physical barriers, and in Oriko Magica we see Homura create a barrier to keep Madoka in and familiars out, and this has nothing to do with either of their personal brands of magic. In Suzune Magica we're told that Suzune can conceal her magic, even from Kyubey, and this has nothing to do with her unique magic either. So, logically, what Karin learns is something that any magical girl can potentially learn. Karin's unique implementation is entirely of my own devising, but it feels so right for her. Karin is amazing, I love her.


	6. The Meaning of Progress | How to Move Forward

“Would you care for a snack?”

Alina had been staying at Karin’s house for two days when she got cornered into a conversation with Karin’s grandmother. Alina had spent much of that time hiding away in Karin’s room, avoiding having to deal with the adults of the house and the questions they wanted to ask. (Questions like “How is your family doing?” and “How were you injured?”, that seemed perfectly reasonable to ask and that Alina had no good way of answering.) Karin had been called away to do chores, and Alina had been left to do some drawing in peace. Not that it was going well, as the growing pile of wadded-up balls of paper could attest to. Her latest attempt was a sketch of the city as seen from atop Eve on that night, the storm clouds above and the fires below, but she wasn’t getting any sensazione at all from it.

So when Grannie entered the room with a plate of cookies, it may have been an irritating distraction, but it was also an excuse to take a break from her frustratingly fruitless sketching. “I suppose I wouldn’t mind a snack.” In any case, Karin seemed to really care about her grandmother, so it wouldn’t do for Alina to be rude to her. And besides, if that fool girl wasn’t going to let her have strawberry milk, she could at least help herself to some cookies when Karin wasn’t looking.

“Good!” Grannie walked over to the bed and, rather than just offering Alina the cookies, sat down next to her and placed the cookies between them. “I always find that it’s nice to have something sweet to eat when I’m feeling troubled.”

Alina’s brows furrowed at that phrasing, but she was already mid-cookie by that point and had to chew and swallow before she could reply. “What makes you think I’m troubled?”

“When you get to be as old as I am, and you’ve raised kids and grandkids, you get to be familiar with the signs,” Grannie said with a chuckle. “You seem like you’ve got a lot on your mind.”

“Mm.” Alina made a non-committal noise, neither confirming nor denying.

“I can listen if you’d like,” Grannie said kindly. “This is another bit of old-person wisdom, but I find that talking about your problems can make them easier to bear.”

Alina doubted that, but… it wasn’t as though she placed much faith in her own gut right now. Besides, if there was even a small chance that this could help her escape her artistic slump, it was surely worth taking. “…Very well,” Alina decided. “I suppose that I would say that… I, Alina, am at a loss of what to do. I’m unsure what I _want_ to do, after… losing my previous goal. It’s frustrating.”

“Oh? You know, I think that being uncertain of the future is something that a lot of young people your age go through.” Grannie laughed, but not unkindly. “Goodness, I certainly had no idea. I did later think that I’d figured it out, but, well, life doesn’t always go as planned. It’s okay to be uncertain.”

Alina frowned and shook her head. The old woman wasn’t getting it, but it’s not like Alina could tell her that she’d held the power to tear down the world in her hands, and that any endeavor now seemed painfully shallow. “That’s not all,” Alina said. “I… made some mistakes. I may have… done some bad things.” Wrapping her head around that was still a source of discomfort for her. She knew that she probably ought to feel more guilty than she did, and _knowing_ that brought up more complicated feelings. “Quite a few people may dislike me now, I’ve burned a lot of bridges. It’s going to make things difficult. In my career.”

“Hm. It sounds like you’ve taken a misstep, and now you’ve lost your way.” Grannie took a good look at Alina, giving her the uncomfortable feeling that the old woman was seeing more deeply into her than she’d intended to show. “Well, I don’t quite know your circumstances. But when you stumble, that’s when you should fall back on the people close to you, your friends and family. With their help you can pick yourself back up, and then you keep moving forward.”

“Moving forward?” Alina tilted her head, a bit surprised. “So, it’s okay to just leave your mistakes behind you?”

Grannie shook her head. “No, no, not at all. You carry your mistakes with you for the rest of your life. But, hm, not as a chain, but… maybe a backpack?” Grannie tapped her finger against her cheek thoughtfully. “You have to learn from your mistakes, not forget about them, or you’ll just repeat them. But you can’t wallow in them either. It may be hard, but you have to keep moving forward.” Grannie chuckled again, but this time there was a tinge of melancholy in it. “My life might have been a lot different if I’d learned that when _I_ was your age.”

“You’ve made mistakes that you regret too?” Alina asked. She vaguely wondered what would constitute a ‘mistake’ for a normal person. Having an argument with a classmate?

“Oh, quite a lot. Some of them quite serious,” Grannie admitted somberly. “I’ve done some bad things, you know. You might be surprised! But I wouldn’t be here today, able to chat with my dear granddaughter and her friends about Phantom Thief Magical Kirin, if I’d given up along the way.” She nodded and smiled. “That’s the advice that this foolish old woman would offer you. Do whatever you can to make things right, accept help from those willing to offer it, and don’t let life bring you down.”

Alina looked at her sketch again, a scene of the masterpiece she’d sought. A finale for the world and herself, a literal dead end, the ultimate work of art in the literal sense that it would be the _last_ work of art. It was a scene that she had been obsessed with for weeks leading up to that climactic day, and that had lingered in her mind since her failure.

But that work wouldn’t, _couldn’t_ be her last.

“You give good advice.” She reached for another cookie, something to give her brain some more sugar.

“And I make pretty good cookies, too, if you don’t mind me bragging a little,” Grannie said with a smile. “Well, I’ll let you go back to your artwork! Thank you for humoring an old woman for a bit.”

“Mrm,” Alina grunted in reply with her mouth full of cookie. She absentmindedly waved a farewell as Grannie left the room, but her mind had already moved on to the next thing. She stared at her sketch of the burning city, then crumpled the page up and started over.

…

…

…

“Alina, I’m back!”

She didn’t bother looking up at Karin. “It’s Art Time,” she declared. “Don’t bother me. You can work on your manga, I’ll review it for you later.”

“Oh, yeah, I should! I had this idea for a scene earlier, I should get it down…”

…

Barely a few minutes passed before Karin spoke up again. “Hey, senpai. Art is really important to you, right?”

Alina took a deep breath. If Karin was asking a question this inane, there was probably a reason for it. “No,” she said without taking her eyes from her drawing.

Karin perked up, looking confused. “No?”

“No,” Alina repeated. “I, Alina, _live_ for art. Saying that it is ‘really important’ is an understatement of the highest degree. The world _is_ art, even if most people are too blind to see it. Alina Gray is an artist, so it’s only natural that I prioritize art above all else. Capito?”

“I see.” Karin sounded troubled. “So… that’s why, you’d even kill for art.”

Alina stopped. She put her pen down and placed her sketchpad aside, focusing the full gravity of her attention on Karin. “Yes. A true artist won’t flinch away from using any materials in pursuit of her goals, no matter what.” She knew that it wasn’t the answer that Karin wanted to hear, but as Karin had put it, she was too proud to lie, especially about art. She could acknowledge that she had made mistakes, and she had yet to find her path after having lost her way, but this principle was something that she believed in.

So of course Karin refuted her without any hesitation whatsoever. “You’re wrong, Alina!” The upstart girl spoke with a surprising amount of confidence. She slammed her hands down dramatically, then pointed a finger at Alina. “A true artist is someone that can make art out of any materials at hand!”

Alina was knocked mentally off-balance by the bold declaration. “That’s… It should go without saying that using superior materials is better than using inferior materials.”

“That’s just a crutch!” Karin objected. “A good artist might be able to make a better work with better stuff, but that just means that you’re letting your tools define your work! But a _great_ artist can make something amazing, even without amazing tools! All a real artist needs is passion and skill. And Alina, you have plenty of both!”

Alina blanched. “Wait, is the point you’re trying to make that–”

“Yes!” Karin’s voice quavered now, a speech that had started with mere enthusiasm now growing weighty with emotion. “If it’s you, you shouldn’t need anything crazy. You shouldn’t need to do things like killing people and destroying the city and making people suffer. That’s just… being lazy! And impatient! You can change the world with just a paintbrush!”

Alina’s mouth opened, then closed again. The words were all bluster and foolishness, but… she didn’t know how to refute them. It was all childish idealism and naivety, but the core of it was a declaration of faith in Alina’s abilities as an artist. In response to Alina’s conviction that anything was allowed, Karin had countered that nothing was _necessary_ , and the only proper argument against that was to say that she, Alina, wasn’t good enough to achieve that. It was annoying, and she wanted to just decry the whole thing as nonsense, but she couldn’t afford to just look away from an inconvenient truth if she wanted to avoid the mistakes she kept making.

“And, I’ll prove it to you!” Karin continued. “Restricting your materials, that’s like using training weights. So, by restricting myself to manga, I’ll get really strong! And someday I’ll even surpass you, Alina! I’ll make a manga that can shake the entire world! Something that hits harder than any of your masterpieces!”

It was completely ridiculous. This argument was one that Alina _could_ properly object to, having a broad mastery of different techniques was certainly more vital than mastery of a single technique, but, as usual, it was a strategy that suited Karin.

Alina laughed, long and clear and joyous. It was _such_ an absurd idea. Karin, still posed triumphantly from the end of her speech, started to blush, and seeing that just looped Alina back into another round of laughter. She couldn’t help herself. She couldn’t remember the last time that she’d laughed like this. It was such a dumb, silly, carefree feeling.

Being surpassed by Karin? Unlike Alina, Karin knew exactly what she wanted to do with her art. Her rough technique had already shown great signs of improvement over time. As things stood, the day that she surpassed Alina might not be so far off.

“Okay,” Alina finally said when she was able to get herself under control, wiping at her eyes with her sleeve. “That’s fine then. I, Alina, accept your challenge. Prove to me that your way of doing things is right.”

Karin nodded fervently. “I will! I’ll prove it! So… don’t make anyone suffer for your art anymore. Okay?”

“I won’t ever compromise on my art.” Seeing Karin open her mouth to argue she quickly raised a finger and continued. “ _But._ I won’t forget what you said. A true artist can work with any materials? You’ll surpass all of my masterpieces? _Magnifico_ _._ I’ll show you that I can go beyond even that. I won’t stop at my past works. Even without suffering, without magic or miracles, I am Alina Gray. I will create art that transcends my masterpieces of the past and your manga of the future.”

Karin clenched her fists, a fire burning in her eyes. “Yeah! You’re on!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're more than halfway through now! This chapter is a relatively calm one, but I think that's okay. A person doesn't grow by making a single decision, they grow by making a lot of decisions over time so that it builds up into a part of you. Hopefully I'm not starting to repeat myself too much, but Alina has a lot to learn (and unlearn), and she has to take that path one step at a time. (Also, I'd originally planned to fit some of this into the previous chapter, but as usual underestimated how much I can write and that chapter would have been seriously bloated if I'd tried to pull that off.)
> 
> Before anyone calls me out on it, yes, Grannie is exaggerating a bit when she claims to have raised kids and grandkids. We know from Karin's MGS that her grandmother wasn't a part of her early life. Still, Grannie Misono's been through some stuff, she can teach a whippersnapper a thing or two.
> 
> Writing the second half of the chapter, I had an idea for a new spinoff. Ace Attorney Karin Misono, Lawyer of Justice! (I think you can tell the moment where I had this idea.) Tonally, I think she'd be right at home with the wacky cast of the Ace Attorney series. It's a fun image, and I need to stop myself from plotting out such a hypothetical before I get too carried away. But I just don't know if it would be more fun for Alina to be the rival prosecutor, or Karin's grating artist friend who ends up as an annoying witness in one case and then gets accused of murder in the next...


	7. The Meaning of Communication | Be Careful What You Search For

_~ Interlude: Karin’s Side ~_

“Karin, I need the room. Vai via.”

“Eh?” Karin, who was cozily leaning against Alina’s shoulder reading manga, tilted her head in confusion. “Why, what are you doing?” It wasn’t that Karin didn’t trust Alina, exactly. Alina had been a well-behaved inmate, she listened to all of Karin’s mandatory lectures and hadn’t made any attempts to steal her soul gem back. She could be cranky sometimes, and she wasn’t always polite, but honestly it was much better than she’d ever been at school, and while she sometimes had philosophical disagreements about some of Karin’s lessons it seemed like she was coming around bit by bit! So it wasn’t exactly that Karin didn’t trust her, but…

Look, when you catch your friend prancing about in caribou hide raving about fulfilling humanity’s desire for death while the city burns down, even if it only happened _once_ , you learned to be cautious. Alina was on a short trust leash.

Alina grimaced. “I, Alina, have decided that it’s time.” She let out a great sigh, looking as though she’d resigned herself to taking on some terrible monster. “I’ve put it off long enough. I’m going to call my parents.”

It took a second for that statement to register, as Karin’s brain worked to reconcile her expectations after Alina’s buildup with what had actually been said. “Oh. …Oh! Right! That’s good!” Karin had been pestering Alina about this for days, and had mostly given up on that fight. Actually, she’d started doing some research to see if she could get herself legally recognized as Alina’s guardian, but it didn’t seem like it would be possible, for a lot of reasons. “I’ll, um, give you some privacy!” She wasn’t sure what had gotten Alina to decide to do this, but she was definitely going to be supportive about this.

“Grazie.”

Karin hopped up and left the room, closing the door behind her. And then she sat back against the door so that she could listen. Because while she was proud of Alina for doing this, and she was going to be supportive, and she didn’t _not_ trust Alina… again, it was a short trust leash. Eavesdropping wasn’t that bad, right?

…

It turned out that she couldn’t tell much of what was going on, though. She could only hear Alina’s side, and it was almost entirely in Italian. And seemed to consist mostly of yelling. That much Italian yelling _did_ mean that she was probably talking to her parents, at least.

Not that Karin knew much about the Gray parents. Alina almost never mentioned them, and when she did it was usually in some snide remark, like ‘They don’t like how much time I spend painting at home’ or ‘They won’t care if I stay out late’. It seemed like Alina wasn’t very close with them. That was sad, but it felt like this was one place that Karin really shouldn’t stick her nose into. Karin would intrude on Alina’s art, her magical girl business, her schooling, and her freedom, but Alina’s relationship with her parents was her own business.

It still made Karin curious, though. She was Alina’s prison warden, after all, so even if she wasn’t going to say anything about Alina’s parents, she should at least know what was going on with them! But even though she’d managed to piece together the meanings of a lot of the little bits of Italian that Alina liked to sprinkle into her sentences, all of this yelling was another matter entirely. She didn’t have a clue.

But maybe…

She whipped out her smartphone and opened up a web browser. She caught one of Alina’s shouts and typed it in as best she could, making a couple of guesses about the spelling. All she had to do was rely on a translater! Even if the automated translation came out kind of garbled, it should give her the general idea. Just fire up the translator, and…

Karin’s eyes skimmed over the text, and her cheeks reddened. That was… That was filthy!

“Alina! Language!”

…

…

…

“So, how was your talk with your parents?” Karin asked later, when it was all done.

“They’re as irritante as ever,” Alina grumbled. “But it was good to settle things with them.”

“Are they okay? After everything… you know?”

“They’re fine. They’re out of the city right now.” Alina didn’t say ‘just as I expected’, but Karin heard it in her tone. “They’re going to buy a new house in Kamihama, after they wait for things to settle down a bit. I have explained to them,” and Karin had to wonder how many of those vulgar phrases had been a part of that explanation, “that I will _not_ be joining them at this time. Certainly not before I’ve had a chance to recover from my ‘injuries’.”

“And they were okay with that?” Karin asked, a bit worried.

“I persuaded them,” Alina said with a smile that might’ve had more pitiful magical girls running for their lives. “But enough about that. They’ve been dealt with, and for the time being I’ll remain here. Let’s discuss something else.”

“Yeah, there is something else that we need to discuss,” Karin said with a nod. “Alina, I can’t believe you talk to your parents like that! We need to work on your language, you’re really rude.”

“Che palle! I can’t believe you’re lecturing me on this. Can’t we just watch one of your anime instead?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the second little Karin interlude, before we get back into the thick of things. Some of what Grannie said struck a chord with Alina and spurs her into action. Karin learns the dangers of searching for words you don't know. Coming up with chapter titles is fun!
> 
> So, I should talk about Alina's parents, and bear with me if I ramble on a bit. I'm kind of uncomfortable filling in characters' backstory with too much headcanon, because I don't want to alienate people who might have their own ideas, but there's only so far I can dance around the issue of Alina's parents. I don't intend to deal with Alina's family circumstances any more closely than I already have, that's too ambitious for this fic where I've already got so much else to cover, but I've been mentioning them now and again and painting a bit of a picture of what I think of them.
> 
> In canon we know VERY little about Alina's parents. One of Alina's homescreen lines mentions that she may have gotten her sense of aesthetics from her parents' gallery. In her MGS she mentions that her parents sent information about her exhibit to the museum, and before making her wish (for a place where she won't be disturbed) she says that her parents get mad at her for spending all her time painting. (Also, at least one of her parents is implied to be foreign based on Alina's Western name structure.) And that's it. That's everything we know. So, Alina's parents were already involved with art and involve themselves in her exhibit, but dislike how much time she spends on art.
> 
> Reading between the lines, I think that Alina has a very distant relationship with her parents. She spends a ton of time out doing Magius things and her parents aren't even mentioned as a concern. She consistently acts with a disregard for authority, bullying adults to get her way at school and at the museum, and the fact that her personality has gotten this bad suggests to me that she doesn't really have any authority figures in her life that would scold her for acting out. If she just hated her parents I would expect her to complain about them more often, but that she so rarely mentions them at all makes me think that she barely interacts with them at all, and her limited interactions with them are grating. Also, when she wakes up in the hospital after her attempted suicide, the first person that she sees upon waking is Karin, not her parents. The picture that I have of them is stiff parents more concerned with their careers than raising a child, way out of their depth trying to raise someone like Alina, and stepping back when they have difficulty with her instead of trying to understand her. They probably care about Alina more than she gives them credit for, but not as much as they should.
> 
> But enough of my rambling! Stay tuned for the next chapter!


	8. The Meaning of Justice | The Philosophy of Punishment

“Alina!” Karin exclaimed, her face set in fierce determination. “Today is the day. Are you ready?”

“Hmph! What a stupida question. Of course I’m ready.” She took hold of her walking stick and, carefully, stood up. Her strength had been coming back day by day, and while walking was still quite draining and a bit painful, it was no longer beyond her. And the time had come for her to prove herself.

“Alright! Today we’re journeying out! We have just one mission, that we absolutely must succeed at,” Karin declared with fiery passion.

“That’s putting it a bit dramatically. We’re just going to–”

“We’re going to buy the new volume of Phantom Thief Magical Kirin!” Karin posed dramatically, raising a fist in the air.

Alina sighed. Well, she’d already known that this was the sort of person Karin was, so it wasn’t as though she was surprised. “Are you sure that _you_ are ready? Do you have your phone?”

“Check!” Karin shouted, holding up her smartphone.

“Your soul gem?”

“Check!” She held her hand up to show off her ring.

“ _My_ soul gem?”

“Check!” She opened her (limited edition) Kirin backpack to show the foil-wrapped soul gem. Alina still found it distasteful that her literal soul was being treated like a piece of candy, but it was hard to argue with the effectiveness. “And,” Karin continued, “disguise, check!”

“A beret and sunglasses hardly count as a disguise,” Alina objected mildly with a roll of her eyes.

“ _And_ we styled our hair differently! Trust me, this’ll work perfectly, no one will even know it’s you!”

Karin had insisted on their ‘disguises’ for this outing, just in case they ran into any magical girls that might be carrying a grudge against Alina. When Alina had asked why she even owned a pair of berets she’d just answered ‘I’m an artist’ as though that explained everything. With a bit of help from Grannie they’d tied Karin’s hair up in a ponytail and Alina’s in a bun, and Alina had coordinated their outfits because if you were going to go around wearing a beret then you were going to do it _right._

“Mission start! Let’s gooo!”

…

…

…

“I… Alina... hate walking… Peggiore…” The bookstore was in sight, it was so close, but Alina had to take a quick break, leaning heavily on her walking stick. This was the fourth such break she’d required; she had perhaps overestimated herself. Fumbling around the house was one thing, but walking a few city blocks was an entirely different undertaking. Her legs burned with the exertion. It was the first time since she’d become a magical girl that she’d felt this way, and she hated it with every fiber of her being.

“Sorry! Maybe I should have flown us here instead,” Karin said, worrying over her.

“No…” Alina disagreed with a shake of her head. “I won’t… cheat myself. I will… get past this.”

“Right! You can do this, I believe in you!”

Alina gulped up as much air as she could, and once she felt ready they crossed the final distance to the store. The cool touch of air conditioning was more soothing than Alina had dared hope. She might even use it as inspiration for one of her art pieces.

“Wah! There’s such a big line!” Karin exclaimed, worried. “Are they all Kirinites? Oh no, I hope they aren’t sold out already…”

“Go find the book,” Alina ordered tiredly. It would be orribile if she had endured the pain of coming here for no reason. “I’m going to find somewhere to sit down.”

Karin nodded. “Okay. I’ll buy the book and come find you. Don’t leave the store!” Alina caught her meaning without need for elaboration. The store wasn’t too large, so as long as they were both here then Alina should still be within range of her soul gem that Karin carried.

Alina made her way down the aisles, looking for a spot out of the way. There didn’t seem to be any seats here, lamentably, but a quiet corner without any people would work just as well. She found a spot in the back of the store that served her purposes, full of thick stuffy-looking tomes and no people. She lowered herself the floor, letting out a relieved breath now that her legs could rest.

That was better. Karin could take as long as she wanted now, as long as Alina got a chance to rest. She leaned back against a bookshelf and closed her eyes, letting herself relax.

…

Someone was walking down the aisle. The footsteps weren’t enthusiastic enough to be Karin, so it was just some customer. Alina would be upset if she had to move to let some stranger reach a book, but maybe handing out a verbal tongue-lashing if they asked her to move would let her work off some frustration. Sighing, she opened her eyes to see what she was dealing with.

The other party had their hand on a book a few steps away from Alina, so she wouldn’t have to move to give them access. Unfortunately, she recognized the young woman, and judging by the way that her eyes had locked onto Alina’s face as well, it seemed that the ‘disguise’ had been predictably useless at concealing her identity.

Kanagi Izumi, boss of the magical girls of eastern Kamihama, opened her mouth. “Alina Gray,” she said stiffly.

It would be _her_ , of all people. “What are you even doing here?” Alina asked in exasperation, making no move to stand. Whether it was intentional or not, Kanagi was currently blocking off her exit.

“I was looking to do some light reading on socioeconomic policy,” Kanagi stated, pulling from the shelf the door-stopper tome that she’d had her hand on when she’d noticed Alina. “I would turn the question back on yourself. This is certainly not the circumstances under which I expected to find you again. Have you been hiding out in this bookstore all this time?”

“I’m here for the new volume of Phantom Thief Magical Kirin,” Alina replied dryly.

Kanagi blinked, seeming surprised. “Truly? _You_ read Kirin?”

“It has a polished art style, a strong core theme, and high entertainment value,” Alina said defensively.

“Yes, but I wouldn’t have expected it to suit your tastes. In truth, I expected that if you weren’t dead that I would encounter you attempting to burn down the city. Again.”

“That’s in the past. And I’ve been paying for it.” To make a point, she gripped her walking stick tightly and used it to push herself to her feet, wincing as she did so.

Kanagi’s gaze held pity, but not mercy. “Do you expect me to believe that you’ve repented and changed your ways?” Coming from anyone else it would have been rhetorical, but somehow Kanagi made it sound like a real question.

“You can believe what you want,” Alina said. She moved her hand to scratch her head, feeling irritated, and was almost surprised when her fingertips hit her beret instead. She sighed. “I, Alina, have only ever cared about my art. But I was wrong about my art. And I’ve been lectured at length about it, it’s molto irritante. I don’t plan to make the same mistakes again. You won’t have to worry about my trying to destroy the city again.”

“Just like that?”

Alina clicked her tongue. “If you’re looking for vengeance, you can beat me as you please. But I can’t allow you to kill me. And I’d prefer you to avoid anywhere that can’t be hidden under clothing.”

Kanagi raised a cold eyebrow. “A surprisingly vain request for someone offering to be beaten.”

“I can’t have my warden worrying about me,” Alina stated simply. “It should go without saying, but beating me badly enough to turn me into a Witch is similarly inaccettabile.”

The look Kanagi gave her was inscrutable. “You know as well as I that that isn’t possible within the bounds of Kamihama’s Doppel system.”

The words came as a surprise to Alina. “The system is still working?” That should have been quite impossible without Eve, and there was no chance that Eve still existed.

“You didn’t know?” Kanagi asked cautiously.

“Obviously not,” Alina shot back with irritation.

There was silence for several moments as Kanagi gazed appraisingly at Alina. She looked behind herself, presumably confirming the absence of onlookers, and then suddenly transformed into a magical girl in a flash of light.

Alina stiffened. She’d prefer to avoid making a scene, but if Kanagi did try to kill her she’d have to call for Karin. Karin would be upset otherwise, and Alina didn’t want a repeat of last time.

But Kanagi made no move to attack, or even to get closer. She just stared at Alina through that crystal monocle of hers. That must be the special ability of the boss of the east, Alina realized. She’d heard about it before, in her duties as a Magius. Kanagi Izumi had the unique ability to read minds. Well, if that was the case then Alina was fine with it. The other girl could look as long as she wanted, Alina had nothing to hide.

“Hm,” Kanagi uttered at last, sounding surprised. “I think you might actually mean what you say.”

Alina snorted, but didn’t comment.

Kanagi released her transformation, but didn’t leave. “Other members of the Wings of the Magius have been tried for their crimes and accepted their judgments,” she said. “Would you be willing to accept the judgment of such a trial?”

“…No,” Alina said after a moment. “As I said, I’m no longer allowed to die. My life is no longer my own, letteralmente.” She raised her left hand, showing off her lack of soul gem, which seemed to surprise Kanagi. “It would be ridicolo to agree to a trial if I’ll only accept the outcome that I want, no?”

“Yes, you’re right,” Kanagi mused thoughtfully. “I can’t rule out the possibility that the verdict could be execution, given the weight of your crimes and the lack of love for you in the magical girl community. And that isn’t the outcome that I desire, either.”

This time it was Alina’s turn to be surprised, raising an eyebrow. “I would have thought that you of all people would have wanted my head.”

Kanagi seemed slightly taken aback by the remark. “Why would you think that?”

Alina frowned. “For justice, for vengeance. I thought that was your deal. Isn’t that why _you_ wanted to destroy the city? I never understood why you backed down on that, when you had the chance.”

Kanagi shook her head. “That isn’t justice. And while I cannot deny that I bear some amount of hatred in my heart for the treatment of Daito Ward by the rest of Kamihama, I’ve never desired the city’s destruction for the sake of vengeance.”

“…Non capisco.”

“The destruction I desire is a means, not an end,” Kanagi explained, some passion leaking into her tone. “Reseting the city to a blank slate. As things stand, there is a great deal of prejudice against the eastern side of the city that has been deeply ingrained into the city’s history, and it has become impossible to remove that hatred without tearing apart the entire city. So, on some level, I desire that. Reducing everyone to the same level and wiping out that history of hatred, in order to build a society where everyone is equal.” She frowned. “There are a number of logistical reasons that it wouldn’t work. Japan’s support infrastructure would prevent the proper abolishment of the lopsided class structure, for one, and I would need a way to destroy Kamihama without wiping out its people, or there would be no point. I don’t consider it to be a feasible goal.”

“Hm,” Alina uttered thoughtfully. “I suppose that I can see the appeal in returning to a blank slate.” If she could take back her actions and return to a state where nearly the entire magical population of Kamihama _didn’t_ hate her guts, it would be convenient.

The sound of running footsteps grabbed the attention of both girls. Their heads turned as a blur in a beret turned the corner, slipped past Kanagi, and interposed herself protectively in front of Alina.

“H-Hey there, Nagitan,” Karin awkwardly huffed, still catching her breath from her mad dash. “What, um, what brings you here today?”

“She’s doing some light reading on socialism,” Alina spoke up. Karin promptly shot her a be-quiet-I-was-trying-to-convince-her-you-don’t-exist glare.

“Socioeconomic policy,” Kanagi corrected, holding up the book. Whatever.

“Oh, yeah? That, uh, sure does sound interesting!” Karin lied unconvincingly.

There was a beat of awkward silence before Kanagi met Alina’s eyes. “Ah. I think I see now. When you mentioned your warden earlier, this is what you meant.”

“Ah, I see you’ve met my friend!” Karin said with badly forced cheer, sweating buckets. “She’s, um, a foreign exchange student. From France! Her name is, uh–”

“Karin, I know that’s Alina,” Kanagi said curtly.

For a moment Karin’s shoulders slumped, but then the next moment she stood tall again, staring defiance at Kanagi. “I’m sorry for keeping it a secret from everyone, but I won’t let you hurt her, Nagitan. She’s under my protection now.”

“So you’ll take responsibility for her? For what she’s done?”

Karin nodded without hesitation. “Yeah. I’ll make sure she doesn’t do anything bad from now on. And if you want to punish her for what she did before, you’ll have to punish me too!”

Alina frowned and stepped forward. “Hold on. The idiota hasn’t done anything wrong, so I won’t let anything happen to her.”

“Alina, I–”

“What do you think the point of a punishment is?” Kanagi asked suddenly, cutting them off.

“It’s a settling of the scales,” Alina answered immediately. “Pay evil unto evil, no?”

“You make it sound really bad!” Karin objected. “It’s about making things right, and fair, and stuff, with consequences.” It was a poor description, but Alina was willing to bet that Karin could say it better by finding a way to frame it in the context of Phantom Thief Magical Kirin.

“This is my personal opinion, but I believe that there are three reasons to punish someone for their crimes,” Kanagi said. “The first is correction, reducing the chance of the punished party repeating their crimes either by convincing them that the consequences of their actions aren’t worth it, or by rendering them incapable of committing the crime again. The second reason is prevention, dissuading _other_ people from committing crimes by showing them the consequences of doing so. The third reason is satisfaction, making people feel better by doing harm to the accused party.” Kanagi frowned. “The third reason is what is too frequently called ‘justice’, but I dislike it. There’s nothing noble about taking pleasure from the pain of other human beings, no matter how vile they may be. I don’t believe it to be a good argument for issuing punishment.

“As for the other two reasons,” Kanagi continued, “in Alina’s case, I’m not sure the second reason is applicable. There currently isn’t any concern about anyone following in her footsteps, and I believe it’s safe to say that anyone that could be motivated to do so is unlikely to be dissuaded from doing so no matter what sort of punishment is decided on, so there’s no purpose in punishing her to send a message. That being the case, the valid reason for punishing Alina is to prevent her from committing further crimes, by removing either her motivation or her capability.”

“Get to the point,” Alina said irritably, earning her another warning look from Karin. “What punishment would you assign?”

“I’m not sure,” Kanagi admitted with a shrug. “I’m not in a position to dictate that sort of result. I would prefer a fair trial to determine what to do with you, but as I said before, there’s a good chance that that would end in execution as things currently stand. I believe that an execution should only be used as a last resort, and I don’t think that will be necessary, based on what I read of your thoughts.” Kanagi nodded to herself, as though coming to a decision. “Therefore, for the time being, I will leave it to Karin to make the decision.”

“…Eh? Me?!” Karin exclaimed in surprise.

“You’ve taken responsibility for her as her warden, haven’t you? You may just understand her better than the rest of us, so I will leave her fate to you. Be sure to dissuade her from committing future crimes.”

Karin nodded her head eagerly. “I will! I’m going to reform her, trust me!”

Kanagi smiled at that, and Alina turned her head away, feeling uncomfortable about the direction this conversation had gone. In a way, it was much easier to deal with blunt accusations of being a heartless monster than earnest declarations that she could become a better person.

“Then we’ll leave it at that for now.” Kanagi’s gaze moved to Alina, and as Alina reluctantly met that gaze she could feel the fire hiding behind it. “Make no mistake, Alina Gray. You have not been forgiven, nor are you absolved of your crimes. I _will_ be checking in on you. Karin, you may have been right about being discrete in this matter, but I expect to be kept informed about any future developments from this point onward. Am I understood?”

“Yes!” Karin said with an automatic salute. “Thanks for being understanding, Nagitan! I’ll keep in touch!”

Kanagi nodded, giving a smile to Karin and a stern look to Alina, and then turned to leave, taking her socioeconomics tome with her.

Karin visibly relaxed, and she turned to face Alina with a smile, another one of those dazzlers that caught the whole of Alina’s attention. “Looks like I got permission to keep you!”

“Mm. …Since when are you friendly with the boss of the east?” Alina asked, voicing something that had been bugging her. Karin wasn’t even from that side of town, but she’d been casually calling Kanagi such a familiar nickname like it was no big deal.

“Oh, that’s because I taught her how be a maid!”

Alina blinked, mind reeling as she tried to make sense of that statement. “Che cosa?”

“Wait, are you jealous?” For some reason Karin seemed happy about that, of all things. “I could give you a nickname too, if you want! Like–”

“Absolutely not,” Alina swiftly cut her off. “And I, Alina, do not get jealous.” Certainly not. “Did you get the manga?”

“Of course! I can’t wait to get home so we can read it! Kirin never disappoints!”

“Si, si.” Alina found that she couldn’t help but smile, Karin’s cheer was infectious. “Very well, let’s get going.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a surprise Kanagi appearance! It's probably obvious, but I had some Things To Say in this chapter. Truthfully, some of that speech about the purpose of a punishment has been fermenting in my thoughts since long before I had the idea for this fic, and this seemed like a good opportunity to get it off my chest and into writing. Hopefully Kanagi still feels in-character, I do think that this is generally in line with the views that she expresses in canon.
> 
> There's an ambiguous timeskip between the previous chapter and this one, because the main story also likes to use ambiguous timeskips. This chapter specifically takes place sometime after the Cherry Blossom Dreams event. After how closely that trial came to going completely sideways, I think it's reasonable to be concerned about putting Alina on trial! She doesn't really have any of the same points in her favor that the other Magius did, so if the trial was conducted the same way, I'm really not sure that the maximum punishment could be overturned. Kanagi doesn't want Alina to get off scot-free, but she's also not the sort of person to execute someone that's genuinely trying to reform.
> 
> It feels wrong to have a chapter about a bookstore and not have Kako! It couldn't be helped, though. Natsume's is a used bookstore, so not the place to find a newly released book, and also Karin and Alina are trying to avoid other magical girls here so they couldn't go there anyway. I also was tempted to throw in an Ashley cameo as one of the Kirinites in the store, but it felt like it would've just distracted from the flow. Still, it would be nice to have Ashley and Alina meet through their mutual friend Karin...
> 
> So, confession time: I was all set to have the chapter start at the bookstore, and then my brain said "Shouldn't Alina make some kind of attempt to disguise herself is she's going outside?", and then Karin jumped up and said "I've got berets!", and then suddenly it was a beret date. I can't argue with that. Karin wanted berets, so that's what happened.


	9. The Meaning of Reflection | The Figure in the Mirror

“Karin. We’re going out,” Alina announced suddenly.

“Huh?” Karin looked up from where she was sprawled across the floor, working on her manga draft (the art for which, Alina noticed, didn’t look too bad, she really had come a long way). “Right now? Where are we–” She caught the look on Alina’s face and cut herself off. “I mean, sure! Let’s go!” She quickly gathered up her work and stowed it away. “Dad, me and Alina are going out! We’ll be back later!”

Alina forced herself not to be impatient while waiting for Karin to get ready. She had made a decision and now she wanted to follow through on that decision without delay, but that wasn’t being fair to others. The world did not, unfortunately, cater to her whims, as she had learned.

Karin waited until they had gotten their shoes on and made it out the door before asking the question. “So… what’s this about? You look really serious about this…”

“There’s something that I’d like to do,” Alina told her as they walked down the road, Alina leading the way. “And… something that I would like to show you.” She frowned. “I’ll need your permission, naturalmente.” A part of her was concerned about that. This was something that she felt she _needed_ to do, but it would require Karin to trust her, and that might be a lot to ask.

“What is it?” Karin asked with a hint of wariness that Alina had well-earned.

“My private atelier. I have some cleaning up that I need to do. It’s an artist’s job to dispose of their own works.”

Karin looked at her quizzically. “Okay. So, where is that?”

Alina looked her in the eye. “It’s inside a labyrinth.” Karin missed a step and fumbled at that statement, and Alina reached out and caught her to keep her from falling. She marveled that she’d regained enough strength not to get pulled over by the attempt. “I’ll need my soul gem to get to it,” she added.

“…Is this going to be dangerous?” Karin asked, looking her in the eye.

A pause as Alina considered it. “Not more than usual for a magical girl.” Karin’s stare intensified, and Alina scratched her head. “I, Alina, promise that I won’t die, I won’t run away, and I won’t hurt anyone. Va bene?”

Karin didn’t look pleased, but after thinking about it for some time she nodded. “Okay. We’ll do it.” She took hold of Alina’s hand and pressed the candy-wrapped soul gem into it. “I’m trusting you, Alina. Don’t let me down, okay?”

Alina nodded seriously.

A quick glance confirmed no onlookers on the street right now, so this spot would do. She donned her magical girl attire in a flash of light, Karin quickly following suit. A motion of her hand summoned an emerald cube, then divided it into a 3-by-3-by-3 cubic formation of cubes, which quickly twisted and rearranged themselves like a puzzle according to Alina’s will. When she was satisfied with the formation the cubes snapped back together into a single piece, and then without moving or changing form the cube seemed to turn inside-out, reality inverting and unfolding around them in a splay of multi-colored light, space _lurching_ around them.

“What is this?” Karin asked with combination of surprise, fear, and wonder.

“This is a labyrinth I created.” The entire landscape here seemed to be made out of crystalline cubes, as did the sky. “It’s what I wished for. A private atelier where I can work on my art away from prying eyes.”

A tremor shook the expanse of cubes, accompanied by a long wordless wail. Karin jumped, while Alina merely smiled fondly. It had been quite some time since she’d had an occasion to come here, and it sounded like this one was hungry.

“That’s a Witch!” Karin cried out, looking at the shape in the distance.

“Si. As I said, this is where I keep my art.” Alina started walking in the direction of the Witch, Karin falling into step beside her. “I made a project out of it. Catching Witches, breeding them, raising them, making stronger Witches.” Those were fond memories, of time spent working hard in pursuit of her art.

The look on Karin’s face put a bit of a damper on things, but it wasn’t unexpected. “That’s…”

“This is the strongest creation that I still have left,” Alina said, barreling on ahead in the conversation. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

The Witch’s body resembled a tower-like raised throne, standing tall above varied sea of balls of fluff, hair, moss, and similar materials, most (if not all) of which were disguised familiars. The Witch’s tongue hung down from the throne like a banner, decorated with stylized eye-like designs that might in fact have been actual eyes, judging by the way they twitched and moved. A pair of dark stick-like arms held up a jar from which an endless stream of water poured out, crashing over the Witch’s head, ceaselessly (and futilely) attempting to wash away its sins.

A surreal, tragic embodiment of despair, a twisted heart exposed to the world. Beautiful.

“Uh… No, that, that isn’t beautiful,” Karin disagreed. “It’s scary, and sad.”

Alina sighed. Perhaps not for everyone, but this was one subject that she absolutely wouldn’t budge on, that Karin would not sway her from. It _was_ beautiful.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said aloud. She cracked her knuckles. Beautiful or not, Alina had already made up her mind. She was discarding this line of work and moving on. “Stand back. I’m going to clean up.”

“What do you– Ah! Alina, wait!”

The girl’s reaction was too slow, Alina was already charging ahead and had no intention of stopping. She felt her pulse quickening as she approached the beautiful monster that towered over her, and it wasn’t out of fear. A smile split her face from ear to ear as the Witch seemed to notice her, turning its ‘head’ in her direction and wailing again.

She’d been told that her reaction to Witches was highly abnormal, but she didn’t care what that white weasel had to say.

Oozy tendrils lashed out from the clump of familiars as the Witch’s base. Alina leaped up, forming a cube in midair and landing on it with a laugh. Another cube formed before her as a volley of familiars lunged up at her, and a barrage of her emerald magic fired from the cube and knocked the hairballs away.

“That’s it! Sono emozionata!”

She turned her attacks on the Witch itself. Green streaks of energy shot from her cube and battered at the Witch, which wailed in reply. It pointed the jar in Alina’s direction and a high pressure torrent of water shot out at her. The cube she’d been standing on shattered before the onslaught but Alina had already moved, jumping away and forming a new cube to perch on. Familiars leaped at her again, and she dancingly dodged from cube to cube, blasting any that got too close between her attacks on the Witch.

It was exhilarating. She could feel it, the rush, the artistic fervor. Dancing on the edge between life and death, pursuing creation and destruction with her own hands. It had been too long.

Too long since her last fight, and she was still getting used to moving her body like this again. She landed badly after one of her jumps, putting weight on her leg at an awkward angle and stumbling to one knee. She managed to stay on her cube, but the Witch didn’t let the opportunity slip, unleashing another torrent of water before Alina could get back on her feet.

She put both hands forward, conjuring a barrier that held back the water. Or whatever the liquid was. Even under high pressure it shouldn’t be able to eat away at her barrier as quickly as it was, and she had to force more power into the shield to keep it up, draining through her reserves of magic at an alarming rate. She grinned and grit her teeth. Being difficult just meant it was more _interesting_. She forced herself to her feet as she continued to pour magic into the barrier, trying to think of a way out of this, her vision darkening at the corners.

“ _What nonsense do you think you’re doing?”_

…What? Whose voice was that?

“Grab on!” a different voice shouted as a blur of motion shot through the skies toward her. She was forced to put the unknown voice aside, grabbing Karin’s outstretched arm as she passed by. The flying girl yanked her away, and a moment later the barrier collapsed behind her.

“I told you to stand back!” Alina shouted over the rush of wind as she settled herself onto Karin’s scythe.

“No!” Karin shouted right back at her as she circled the Witch at high speed. “If you think I could just sit back and watch, then you’re… you’re full of _merda_!”

Alina blinked. Where had this absurd girl learned to talk like that? Well, it was obviously from Alina herself, but… No, that was a distraction. “An artist disposes of her own trash. This is none of your business!”

Another spray of liquid cut through the air towards them, and Karin nimbly maneuvered out of the way without missing a beat, while Alina was forced to hold on tightly to avoid being thrown off the scythe.

“I’m making it my business! I’m your warden, and your friend, and… and I’m the magical girl born of Halloween, Magical Karin! And I’ll do whatever I want without caring what anyone thinks about it, not even you!” She looked back, fixing Alina with a hard stare. “So deal with it! I’m helping you!”

Alina met that stare with her own. This wasn’t Karin’s business, but… this girl, who awkwardly stumbled from one problem to the next and would always beg Alina for advice and critique, who would usually quake before a stern look… Alina had never once gotten her to back down when she got this stubborn look in her eyes. Alina barked out a sharp laugh and smiled widely.

“So be it! This will be a collaborative piece! Don’t let me down, Karin! Andiamo!”

“Right! Wah, what are you doing?!”

Alina stood up, fearlessly balancing upon the scythe as they cut through the sky, one hand keeping her hat from flying away. “You focus on dodging. I, Alina, will attack!” She summoned one cube, then another, then a third, and let loose with a continuous barrage of energy from all three. The Witch tried to fire back with streams of water, but Karin stayed one step ahead and kept them out of the way, and any familiars that tried to go after them were intercepted by a storm of candy.

“ _How long will you let yourself be led around by that ridicola idiota?”_

…That voice again? Why? No, this was no time to be distracted, she continued her full assault on the Witch. It truly was a mighty specimen, but even it should only be able to bear a continuous onslaught like this for so long.

“Your soul gem!” Karin’s voice called out in fear, prompting Alina to look down. “It’s so dark!”

Ah. Well, she had been fighting quite recklessly with her magic, so that was no surprise. Or rather, that had been her intention from the start. “It’s fine!”

She pumped even more magic into one of her cubes without heed for her soul gem’s light or the weakness in her limbs, splitting the cube into twenty-seven and sending the individual pieces spiraling around one of the Witch’s arms. The small cubes unleashed a sudden intense burst of magic, overwhelming the arm from all sides and causing the limb to crack and snap off. “That’s it! I’ll take you apart, piece by piece!”

“ _Have you, Alina, given up on your ambition?”_

It seemed as though fog was settling over Alina’s eyes, a result of how dark her soul gem was becoming. Still, she was _almost_ there, and… She lost her balance for a moment and almost spilled off of the scythe, saved only because Karin looked back and caught hold of her.

“Be careful!”

With Alina’s vision fuzzy and Karin’s attention on Alina, they both missed the critical moment. The Witch, unable to properly aim its streams of water with only one arm, chucked the entire jar at them. Noticing only at the last moment as it hurtled through the air toward them, Karin made a futile last-ditch swerve that failed to get them out of the way fast enough and Alina used the scant magic she had left to throw up a barrier that immediately popped like a soap bubble under the weight of the boulder-sized vase. All too little, too late. The jar clipped them, and Alina experienced a brief sensation of falling before a sudden and harsh impact without the ground.

Her body felt unbearably heavy, but she didn’t have time to lay down and whine about her injuries. She tried to channel magic into her body to force it to move, but she couldn’t seem to grasp any magic. She craned her head around, but all she could see was a fuzzy fog-like expanse of white. Where was the Witch? Where was Karin? She had to destroy the Witch, had to keep Karin safe, couldn’t die here…

“ _Patetica. Is this all the resolve you had?”_

That voice again. It seemed clearer than ever now, when everything else seemed so far away. Alina saw a shadowy figure draw closer through the fog, and it suddenly occurred to Alina that she recognized this voice.

It sounded just like her own.

“I have plenty of resolve,” she growled at the shadow. “I won’t die here. I, Alina, still have so much further to go.”

“ _And yet you, Alina, gave up,”_ the shadow said mockingly. _“Chewed up and spat out by this city, you surrendered your vision to oblige the naive ideals of society. You gave up on the most important thing, Alina’s Beauty.”_ The shadow laughed as Alina squirmed, trying and failing to rise. _“So, just give up yourself to me. I, Alina, will finish what you gave up on, the perfetto finale for this city.”_

Alina thought her teeth might snap from how hard she was gnashing them. This _bitch_. “Shut up. I have surrendered _niente_. I will always pursue my ideal beauty, no matter what. No matter how many roads I must walk, how many times I have to start over, how many of my own works I have to discard, I’ll never stop moving towards that ideal.” Her hand found purchase on the smooth featureless ground, and she threw all of her willpower into pushing herself up.

“ _And yet, you’d give up on the beauty of Witches? Why? Because of that idiota’s words?”_ The shadow, a hazy reflection of Alina’s own form, crouched down to look at her more closely.

“I’m the real idiota, having to get lectured by _her_ about something so obvious,” Alina snapped, straining, fighting for every precious inch she slowly rose. “Death is beautiful because we want to live? I should have seen it. No, I _did_ see it, I just didn’t understand it.”

The shadow was still, watching Alina with great interest.

“Doppels,” Alina snapped, getting one of her knees in position to keep herself propped up. “I thought from the start that they were beautiful, even more beautiful than Witches. And they’re the embodiment of that girl’s words. Existing at the brink of life and death, the border where hope becomes despair, where true beauty lies. But they become power for those with the will to _live_ after being swallowed by that despair.” Alina bared her teeth, her smile sharp enough to cut metal. “A beauty that reflects the darkness of the one that bears it! A beauty that hasn’t been set in stone, but can still be molded by will! Of course I would abandon Witches! I, Alina, have something better!” She got a foot beneath her and, trembling with effort and passion both, pushed herself fully to her feet. “I’ll engrave the beauty of life upon this world!”

The shadow in Alina’s shape, now looking up at the risen Alina from the crouching position beneath her, gradually smiled, and then laughed madly. _“If you have this much passione, that’s fine. You, Alina, are strong enough to walk this path.”_

A niggling memory nipped at Alina’s mind, of Touka talking about some phenomenon related to Doppels, a hallucination that some girls experienced about talking to themselves, that Alina had mocked because she’d never experienced it.

“ _Let’s party!”_

The shadow vanished, and through the thinning fog Alina saw Karin desperately fending off Witch and familiars alike with a combination of scythe and flames and candy. She flashed suddenly with light, donning the Uwasa of the Fur God. Alina raised an arm toward the scene and felt something surge within her, the dense impurities in her soul gem becoming _power_. She took a step forward and brilliant colors pooled beneath her feet, sickening shades of paint bubbling up in accordance with her Doppel’s will.

Perfetto.

“Karin, get down!” Alina surged forward on a flood of luminous liquid, painting over the sterile scenery of her own labyrinth. Karin looked back at her with an expression of surprised joy that quickly turned to surprised panic as she leaped aside. The Doppel’s paint splattered thick over the gathered Familiars, and wherever the paint touched dark growths sprouted and grew, spreading rapidly, like fungus, like contagion. They were Alina’s art, her property, drenched in her colors. Her madness.

“That’s–!” Karin cried out, but Alina had no time for that. She was _painting_ right now.

The Witch wailed loudly at the new threat, and Alina met its war cry with a laugh. The Witch’s arm swung down to crush her and her Doppel surged upward, a mass of paint and corruption rising to meet it. The hand pulled back without reaching Alina, but coated with _beautiful_ dripping growths. The Witch’s stilt-like legs moved awkwardly away from Alina and it tried to reach for the water jar that it had chucked earlier, but it was too late. Alina’s power gushed forth, drenching the Witch’s base, and macabre colors spread wildly across the Witch’s body from both sites of infection, hand and feet.

“You don’t need that holy water anymore,” Alina told her former pet, hands pressed to her cheeks as she gazed upon her work with an enraptured smile. “I, Alina, will wash away all of your sins for you. I have no need for outdated artwork.”

The Witch knocked itself over in its struggles, falling near Alina. Completely enveloped in viral growths, it still lurched toward her as though trying to make one final effort to crush her. Her smile didn’t falter as she crossed her arms, fingers splayed, posing beautifully.

“Addio!”

The sound of a wet burst and a splatter of paint marked the end of the Witch. Alina let out a contented breath. Truly she had missed this feeling.

She almost buckled under the sudden wave of exhaustion that fell upon her in the wake of the battle, but she managed to stay upright. Using a Doppel was draining even under the best of circumstances, and this time had been… different than usual. Why had that shadow appeared before her this time? Because her conviction had been shaken since that day with Eve? Well, it was something to think about later.

The effects of her Doppel began to fade as though someone were taking an eraser to the labyrinth, revealing the grief seed that had been concealed in the tangled jungle of infection. Alina started to reach for it, then paused. She wasn’t… entirely sure that she would have enough strength to stand back up if she crouched down to grab the grief seed.

Karin snatched it up first and spared her from finding out, but the other magical girl looked irate. “You had me worried! What was that? Was that the, um, Doppel thing that I heard about? Also that was really dangerous, you should–Ow!” Karin shielded her head with her hands after Alina delivered a light chop to her forehead.

“You should be more careful as well, you ridicola girl,” Alina scolded with a scowl. “That Uwasa is dangerous, you shouldn’t be so reckless with it!”

Karin frowned, and in a quick flash of light stowed the Fur God Uwasa and returned to her base magical form. “Okay, but you were being reckless too! I can’t believe you tried to fight that Witch alone! After everything I’ve been telling you about how important it is to value your own life!”

“I, Alina, had absolutely no intention of dying. There were just… some complications, and it didn’t go as well as I’d planned,” Alina admitted, irritated. “Look, if I apologize for worrying you will you do the same?”

Karin looked surprised, but nodded. “Okay. I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry too. There.” Alina let out a deep breath. With a wave of her hand the world around them turned inside-out as she put away the labyrinth, depositing them back on the street, and they both reverted back to their normal clothes. “Anyway, we should be celebrating!”

“Celebrating?” Karin tilted her head at Alina. “Oh, for beating the Witch?”

“Not that!” Alina smiled and gestured excitedly as she spoke. “I, Alina, caught a glimpse the path I want to walk. I’m ready to move forward. What I want to do with my art, the message I want to show the world, it’s starting to take form.”

Karin was silent for a few moments. “…And you’re not going to hurt anyone this time?”

Alina scowled. “I’m not. We’ve had this talk, I haven’t forgotten it. I can do better than that.”

“Then I’m glad!” Karin said, suddenly smiling. “We’ll celebrate when we get home!”

“Fantastico. …Ah, that’s right.” Remembering now, Alina held her soul gem out to Karin. “Here you go. Continue keeping it safe.”

Karin looked at the gem, then, slowly, shook her head. “Actually… I want you to keep it.”

Alina blinked in surprise. “Are you sure? It’s okay, you know, I trust you with it.”

“It’s not okay,” Karin disagreed. “I want to trust you too. So, I need to show it. I’ve been watching you for a while, and, I think you’re doing really well!” She nodded, as though convincing herself. “So, I want you to have it back. …But you’re still on probation! You’re absolutely not allowed to do anything crazy without telling me! No fighting Witches alone, no fighting other magical girls without me, no weird surreal living art pieces without checking with me, no sneaking off and doing shady things in secret where I can’t see you! Is that clear?”

Alina looked down at her soul gem, sparkling clean after her Doppel usage. “Si. That’s acceptable.” Or, rather than acceptable… “I want you to keep watching me, Karin.” It was difficult to express, but the way that the younger girl viewed the world, the way that she saw something so different from what Alina saw… That was something valuable, and Alina to know more about the beauty that Karin saw. She wanted to know more about the Alina Gray that was reflected in Karin’s eyes.

Karin grinned at her. “Yeah!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The strength of heart required to face oneself has been made manifest. Alina has faced her other self… She has obtained the facade used to overcome life’s hardships, the Persona Old Dorothy!
> 
> I always really like the doppel uncap stories where we get to see girls confront themselves, and it's a shame that so many girls don't get those scenes. It usually seems to be something that happens the first time a magical girl uses their doppel, but not always, Iroha didn't have anything like that on her first time, so my headcanon is that it's something that happens when a girl is wavering or takes actions contrary to their nature. I think that for Alina, who has a different perspective on witches than anyone and uses her doppel so casually the first time we see her in the main story, confronting her shadow would be an experience that she's never had before. But now that Alina is rethinking her choices, her doppel wants to confirm her resolve.
> 
> It's been a while since Alina has gotten to go wild! Up until now she's been struggling both physically and with what she wants to do, but she's recovered enough now to go full crazy artist. I think that's something that will always be a part of Alina, but at least now she's got it aimed in a better direction. It's fun to write her letting loose, and for that matter, it's fun to write action scenes. I think I've got a pretty good grasp on making the action clear and easy to follow and visualize, though I've still got room to improve with regards to flow and pacing. (Well, I hold myself to pretty high standards.)
> 
> We're almost at the end! This chapter, where Alina bombastically confronts her past and finds her resolve, might be considered the climax of the story, with the next and final chapter being the conclusion. Look forward to it!


	10. The Meaning of Life | A Reason to Live

_~ Finale: Karin’s Side ~_

The house at night was dark, but not quite pitch black. There were small bits of light here and there, the lit numbers of a digital clock, glowing LED lights from electronics on standby, a small shaft of illumination coming through the window from a streetlight. Karin remembered that when she was younger she had thrown blankets over all the little sources of light sometimes so that she could play in total darkness, pretending to be a thief, or a ninja, or a cat, or a ghost. …Not even _that_ much younger than she was now, if she was being completely honest, but she didn’t really need that brand of pretend anymore now that she was a real-life magical girl.

While the lights might have ruined a child’s immersion of playing in the dark, they were good for finding one’s way to and from the bathroom at the wee hour of… 4:03 AM, according to the light of the stove clock. Karin stifled a yawn. Too early to be up, that was for sure!

Karin opened her bedroom door very carefully and quietly, feeling very thief-like as she did so. She tried to make as little noise as possible as she crept into the room. Alina liked to sleep in, and she always got cranky if she had to wake up early. Karin smiled to herself at that thought as she tiptoed to her futon. Alina was…

Not here.

Karin froze, suddenly feeling very awake. Even without much light, Karin could see that Alina’s sheets were pushed aside and her bed empty of any sign of Alina. Karin took a deep breath to calm herself, then moved closer to be completely sure. Yeah, definitely no Alina. She turned the light on, wincing against the sudden brightness, and confirmed that Alina wasn’t anywhere in the room. Okay, no need to panic, maybe she’d just gotten up to go to the bathroom… Except that there was only one bathroom in the house, and Karin hadn’t run into her on the way back from there! Had Alina even been there when Karin had gotten up? She hadn’t thought to look, maybe Alina had been missing for hours, she could be anywhere by now…

Fighting against the sinking feeling in her gut, Karin touched her ring. _“Alina?”_ she said with her mind, casting out telepathically through her soul gem. _“Are you there?”_

Silence.

And then, after a few moments, a single world. _“_ _Si_ _.”_

Karin nearly jumped with relief. Alina hadn’t run away! _“Where are you?”_

Another slight delay followed by a terse reply. _“The roof.”_

Karin cocked her head. That was an odd place to be in the middle of the night. _“What are you doing there?”_

The reply was instant this time, and cross. _“Being interrupted, apparently.”_

Oh, that explained it. Alina was doing art. Karin had interrupted her enough times to recognize that tone. She thought about it for a bit, then decided that she was already wide awake from her moment of panic so she might as well go check what Alina was working on.

She threw on a light coat, made a quick stop in the kitchen to grab something, and then sneaked quietly outside. She wasn’t sure how Alina had clambered up onto the roof, but Karin knew one good way to get up. A quick transformation and a brief ride on her scythe was all it took, and she was setting down lightly on the roof beside Alina.

Alina had an easel set up where she could stand facing the sleeping city, a paintbrush in her hand, and didn’t even glance at Karin as she landed, eyes focused on her work. There were several more canvases lying around her, already filled with Alina’s art. A cool and soft night breeze was blowing, and in this dark predawn hour the city was as quiet as it ever got.

Karin cancelled her transformation as she stepped up to stand at Alina’s side. She wasn’t sure where Alina had even gotten all of these canvases from. Had she gone out and bought them just now, or did she keep a labyrinth full of art supplies? “Do you know what time it is?” she asked, gently so as not to irritate her.

Alina didn’t answer right away, adding another brushstroke first. “Not really,” she admitted after a moment.

Karin had figured as much. “How long have you been up here for?”

Alina shrugged. “I’m not sure. Non mi importa.” A long, lazy stroke of her paintbrush was suddenly followed by a quick bold swipe. “I had energy to burn off. I came up here where I wouldn’t be disturbed.”

In other words, Alina had been too inspired to sleep so she’d stayed up most of the night painting, all the way out here where she wouldn’t bother anyone. Karin smiled, even though Alina wouldn’t see it with her eyes on her work. She was pretty good at understanding Alina-speak!

Karin turned her attention to the painting and did a double-take in surprise. “That’s the Sandbox Witch!” Even though the painting was incomplete, she couldn’t fail to recognize one of the more common Witches around Kamihama.

“I wanted to try something,” Alina said with an idle wave of her hand, eyes still forward. “Even if I have no more use for the the living specimens, their beauty shouldn’t go to waste. I can put together an exhibit for them.”

Looking at the other canvases, Karin realized that she recognized more of them. The Sheep Witch, another Kamihama regular, and the Saintly Witch, that they’d fought in Alina’s labyrinth. And… Karin had told Alina that she didn’t think that Witches were beautiful, and she meant it. But here, depicted in Alina’s watercolors, her surreal adaptation of naturally surreal monsters, they seemed to be imbued with a sense of… well… Karin was bad at putting it into words, but wonder, and loneliness, and passion, and tragedy, and, well, beauty.

It blew Karin away, making her feel like she’d taken a step closer to Alina’s world. If this was how Alina saw them, then Karin could understand her calling them beautiful. Though, of course, they were still horrifying murderous monsters made out of the tormented souls of magical girls, and the idea of raising them was still a really creepy and scary thing that Karin planned to have more lectures about.

“I was thinking I could donate the profits from admissions to reconstruction efforts,” Alina spoke up without prompting. Karin’s head immediately swerved to look at Alina in shock. “It is partly my, Alina’s, mess to clean up. And it should do for making some amends.”

“Yeah!” Karin nodded energetically. “I’m proud of you, Alina!”

Alina huffed but didn’t argue, which Karin took as a sign that she was too proud to admit she was pleased.

Not all of the canvases were Witches. There was a cloth wrapped over one canvas, or maybe it was two stacked together, and Karin was really curious about that, but there was also a canvas with a form that she recognized. It was a bit stylized here compared to when she’d seen it before, but there was no mistaking the clump of virus-like patterns gathered in and around a torrent of psychedelic colors. There was only a small section of the canvas that wasn’t covered in paint, a negative image in the outline of a person.

“This is your Doppel, right?” Karin asked, picking up the canvas.

Alina looked away from her painting for the first time since Karin had arrived, glancing to check the art in Karin’s hands. “Si. Beautiful, isn’t she?”

Karin dodged the question, instead pointing at the unpainted figure that must have represented Alina herself. “You’re missing part of it. What about the little thing on your back?”

Alina blinked, then tilted her head in confusion. “Cosa?”

“You know, the little fella that copies you?”

Alina’s stare lengthened, like she was trying to look at something a thousand miles away. “There was another part to it? One that I didn’t see?” Her brow furrowed, and suddenly her gaze snapped back to Karin. “Karin. You’ll have to draw it for me. No, better yet, you’ll have to take a picture next time.”

“I can do that!” Humming happily to herself, Karin put down the painting of the Doppel and picked up the wrapped bundle. “So, what’s this?”

“I wanted to try something,” Alina said cryptically as she turned back to the Witch painting she was working on. “Well, the result were more or less what I expected. You can look at them if you’d like. They aren’t part of the same set.”

Curious, Karin unwrapped the bundle to get to the two paintings inside. The first one emanated a deep sadness. A stylized portrait of a person’s face – a girl, Karin thought, though she wasn’t completely sure, the lines and colors were bizarrely distorted for artistic effect. Their expression was twisted in pain, and muddy tears carved rivers down their face. It was an expression of grave loss, and Karin felt it pulling at her heartstrings from just a glance.

“This person is so sad,” Karin said out loud. She might start crying herself if she looked at it for too long.

Alina gave her a strange look, then put her paintbrush down. She seemed… troubled? Embarrassed? Anxious? “It’s you.”

At first the words didn’t really register, Karin was just confused. She looked back and forth between Alina in the painting, slowly at first and then again in a quick double-take. “This is me?!” Looking closely, now that she knew what to look for, she guessed that the hair style did look _sort of_ like her own, but… “Why am I crying?!”

Alina snorted. “The title of the piece is ‘As I Lay Dying.’ Or perhaps ‘Why I Won’t Die.’ I haven’t decided, I don’t really care. It doesn’t meet my standards. Ordinarily I’d just destroy it, but…” She waved her hand vaguely. “It’s still an Alina Gray original, someone will probably pay money for it. Since I’ve already finished it, it might as well go towards reconstruction funds too.”

Karin’s head was spinning from the revelation. Maybe she was misunderstanding? It sort of sounded like Alina was saying that she didn’t want to die because it would make Karin sad? No, no, that probably wasn’t it at all! She probably just used Karin’s face as a model out of convenience, because they spent so much time together! That’s all!

Still, she didn’t ask Alina for clarification. Anyway, there was still one portrait left. Karin put Sad-Karin aside to look at the canvas behind it.

Immediately, Karin felt her cheeks beginning to glow.

Unlike the last one, this portrait was _instantly_ recognizable as a painting of Karin. Framed against a backdrop of sky as though she were flying, the Karin in this picture seemed to have a nimbus of golden light around her. The lines of the work and the way the lighting was framed drew the eye to the focus point, Karin’s smile, a dazzling expression of pure and infectious joy.

Karin, beet-faced, put the painting down and wrapped the cloth back over it so she didn’t have to look at it anymore. That was… she didn’t even have words for it, but it was really embarrassing! It wasn’t even Alina’s usual style, why did she make something like this?!

She cleared her throat, her heart pounding, her mouth suddenly dry. “So,” she said, trying and utterly failing to sound casual, “were you, um, planning to donate this one too?”

“Of course not,” Alina scoffed, and Karin almost fell over when she realized that Alina was blushing too. “I didn’t paint that for other people to look at, I did it to prove a point to myself. I have no intention of giving it away to anyone else.” Alina wasn’t painting right now, but she was fixedly not looking at Karin. “The title is…” Alina paused, hesitant, and Karin thought her heart might stop at seeing Alina act embarrassed like this. “‘A Reason to Live.’”

“Alina!” Karin couldn’t help herself, she tackled Alina into a hug.

“Ack! What do you think you’re doing?! Vai via! I’ve got paint on my smock, you’ll get it all over yourself!”

Giggling as they wrestled, Karin eventually allowed herself to be peeled away from Alina. Her heart felt light enough to fly, and she almost pinched herself to check that she wasn’t dreaming. A Reason to Live. Alina really had come a long way if she could think like that. She truly had been paying attention to Karin.

Clutching her sides as she tried to get her giggles under control, Karin felt the item that she had shoved into her coat earlier. “I’m thirsty,” she said suddenly, standing closely at Alina’s side.

“I’m not going to go fetch you a drink,” Alina replied, no nonsense.

“That’s fine,” Karin told her. “I’ve got one.” She pulled a carton of strawberry milk out of her coat pocket and, with exaggerated casualness, poked a straw into it and took a sip.

Alina glared at her with a face that quite plainly said ‘I know that you’re doing this on purpose’.

Karin laughed… and pulled out the second carton of strawberry milk. “Just kidding! I’ve got one for you too.” Alina’s face softened immediately in surprise, and Karin held the treat out to her. “You’ve earned it! You’re really amazing, Alina. I mean it.”

Alina looked at the strawberry milk consideringly. Her hand snapped out, moving past the offered milk and instead snatching away Karin’s already-opened carton.

“Wah! But I got you your own!”

Alina took a long slurp before she answered. “This just feels right,” she said with a shrug.

Karin started laughing again, and after a few moments Alina started laughing with her. It was an incredibly comfortable feeling. Back on that day, when Karin had found Alina raving as the city burned, she hadn’t been sure that she’d ever be able to feel this way again. But she’d worked hard, and Alina had worked hard, and now here they were.

The way that Alina was now… Karin thought that she would be okay. Even though this moment wouldn’t last forever, and Alina would have to go home to her family before long, and Karin would only be able to keep her a secret from the rest of the Kamihama magical girls for so long… Alina was such an amazing person, and she’d grown so much, so Karin was sure that she would be okay no matter what happened.

And besides, Karin wasn’t going to let her face that future alone.

“I’m so glad that you’re alive, Alina,” Karin confessed with a smile.

Alina looked at her, and, after a moment, smiled back. It was as dazzling as a sunrise coming up over the horizon.

“I’m glad too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so we reach the end! I want to give a huge thanks to everyone in the comments, all the support that I've gotten really means a lot to me, it's made this whole project so worthwhile. I spent... somewhere around a month working on this, I think, and it expanded so far beyond what I'd originally expected. I remember thinking it would be "a long single chapter", then "maybe 3 or 4", then "probably not more than 7", until finally I pinned down that it was going to be 10 chapters. I had a lot to say! This has been by far my most ambitious fanfic so far, and it feels strange to be done. If you made it all the way to the end, hopefully you enjoyed it!
> 
> This is the end of the story, and I definitely need a break from writing it. But it's possible that I might come back later and do some shorter one-offs set after this story, if the mood takes me. I do have some ideas that sound fun, there's certainly room for it, but I make no promises. I'm usually at the whims of my own fickle writing inspiration.
> 
> Originally, I had actually planned to title this story "The Art of Redemption". But once I started writing it and the plot took shape, I realized that... I don't actually feel that Alina has earned redemption by the end of this. She caused a lot of trouble (to put it mildly), and I think she's got a lot of work to do if she wants to make up for all that. So, rather than this being a story about Alina being redeemed, it's more like... this is a story about Alina reaching a point where she's capable of pursuing redemption, and by the end she's made it to the starting line. Still, I like the title, maybe I'll find a way to re-use that later.
> 
> Some notes for this final chapter specifically. Earlier I said that there would be 2 Karin interludes, and, uh, it was true at the time because I hadn't written this final chapter yet. I went back and forth several times about which perspective to write it from, but ultimately decided that there were certain parts of it that just worked better from Karin's perspective. I think there's something fitting about seeing Alina's growth through the eyes of another character. Though it does leave some things to be implied rather than explicit. I will note that Alina got the image for painting Karin crying from Chapter 4, after the close brush with the Black Feathers, and there were several inspirations for Karin's smile, one notable occasion being the end of Chapter 5. To Alina, both expressions are beautiful, but she has chosen one over the other.
> 
> Alina and Karin have both come so far! I'm so proud of them, they're both such great characters. I could probably keep going on about my thoughts about them and this story all day. Thanks again for reading!


End file.
